


The Big Four: Now You See It...

by defyaugury



Category: Brave (2012), How to Train Your Dragon (2010), ROTBTD - Fandom, Rise of The Brave Tangled Dragons - Fandom, Rise of the Guardians (2012), Tangled (2010), The Big Four - Fandom
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-26
Updated: 2014-01-25
Packaged: 2018-01-02 16:36:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 49,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1059107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defyaugury/pseuds/defyaugury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two hundred years into the future, and our four heroes are now four of the world’s most renowned criminals. Two of the FBI’s best agents are assigned to the case, while four of the most impossible heists ever attempted are scheduled to go down within the next year. There’s only one way for it to end well. But, nothing is ever as it seems....Can you see it?<br/>[RotBTD Criminal!AU] [Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons Criminal!AU]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [THE BIG FOUR: A New Breed of Thieves](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/31303) by crazejen. 



> PLEASE READ! I just want to send a massive shout out and thanks to crazejen on fanfiction.net, who let me use her Criminal!AU idea for this fic. It was her original idea and I loved it. Please check her out! She's an awesome writer and a wonderful person for letting me borrow her idea! Thanks again!

  
**Prologue:**

The year is 2234 and the human race is thriving in an entirely new world. Cities have nearly tripled in height and population. Everyone crowding everywhere, lives stacked on top of one another in the mass array of city apartments as hover cars swarm below on the multiple levels of flight decks. Some cities grew up while other grew out, swallowing county after county as they expanded their reaches. The government and various agencies of such have gone through reform after reform, rules and regulations morphing and changing. Though the advancements are not quite as previously predicted (no Star Fleets, or inter-galactic colonies on distant planets), technologies and systems are advancing everyday with new devices and gadgets.

The human race is, surprisingly, relatively the same, still fighting each other, still selfish and giving all at once. Even the clothing style hasn’t changed much with standard jeans and t-shirts interrupted occasionally with the growing crowd of cyber-goths, techno-pyros, and geeks. We still separate ourselves and discriminate, only now, it’s not just amongst our own species.

In the year 2103, there was extraterrestrial contact. Aliens touched down in Sydney, Australia, leading to world wide panic. After a few false starts, they managed to identify themselves as peaceful, leading to the start of political negotiations between their leaders and the leaders of the five world powers of the time: England, China, Canada, Japan, and, of course, America.

Apparently, the Earth had been watched by outside eyes for a while. After years of observation, the other worldly configurations had determined that the human race was ready for exposure to a larger universe. They lent certain knowledge of innovations and technologies to the world in exchange for alliances. They recognized the potential humans possessed to become a great race and a powerful extraterrestrial ally. Soon after the political agreements, came the social integrations of species.

A collection of other planetoid life-forms, now widely dubbed by the public as E.T.s, began to migrate onto Earth. A few were hoping to find Earthly riches or better lives. Most were hoards of volunteers shipped to our planet by their own governments as a part of a political plan of “assimilation,” meant to ease political negotiation with the predicted social acceptance. However, their actual acceptance to the planet was not filed with an overabundance of kindness. Meanwhile, humans left their home planet to explore these strange, new worlds that had opened their doors to them.

There was a massive movement of advancements and inventions, brought on by extraterrestrial influence and knowledge, that began to slow slightly from its initial push by the 2180s. In the wake of this third industrial revolution, also known as the Big Boom, were improvements, new technologies, and a new way of life. Hover cars, hover boards, new methods of growing crops, as well as innovative technologies to replace outdated ones, were all results of the influx of advancements. No one thought of how all these advancements would would affect the crime world, organized or otherwise. So, it came as a surprise to most that a major result of this technological revolution was the new wave of crime that spread throughout the world.

With new technologies came new weapons; new drugs and distribution systems; new artworks, banks, and museums to rob; and new methods of operating the underworld.


	2. Reassignment

**Chapter 1: Reassignment**

    Special agent E. Aster of FBI headquarters in Washington D.C. was jerked out of his reverie as a thick electronic file landed on his desk. He looked up to find his Unit Chief looming over him. The Chief’s bright blue eyes were deadly serious under the shelf of his thick, black eyebrows.

    “Bunnymund, Faeley. With me,” the rough, Russian accent allowed no room for argument.

    Aster glance to his partner, Special Agent Toothiana-- usually Ana in informal settings-- and a silent question passed between them: _What was this about?_ They stood to follow the large man through the halls of headquarters, keeping an eye on the white head of hair bobbing through the scant flow of agents, chiefs and directors.

    The trio soon approached an imposing office door on one of the upper levels. Set in the door was a thick, frosted window pane, blurring the scene of what lay on the other side. Blocked out in big, black letters on the window pane where the the words:  
  
 **ASSISTANT DIRECTOR**  
 **MANDALYN I. MOONY**

    The two agents shared another glance. Though they knew Mandalyn personally, being called into the Assistant Director’s office without prior warning was very rarely heard of. Whatever was going on, it was serious. The Chief opened the door and lead the two agents into the room.

    The room was spacious, with various monitors along the walls flashing images of wanted criminals, case file updates, and reruns of certain television dramas. A dying fern sat in the corner next to a large self stacked with e-files and holo-paper. A large, oak desk sat in the center of the office. Behind the desk was a woman, her silver blonde hair pulled into a severe ponytail. Her crystal blue eyes were shielded behind half moon spectacles. She glanced up from the files she was reading as the three entered the room and motioned for the two agents to sit. They complied.

    “Ah, Nick, thank you,” she directed towards the large man still standing by the door.

    The Unit Chief gave a curt nod before he made to leave.

    “Actually, you might want to stay for this, Nick. You have involvement in the case, do you not?” the Assistant Director advised, causing the large man to give another nod before moving to stand in the corner.

    “Agents Bunnymund, Faeley,” the woman now directed her attention back to the agents seated before her.

    “Yes, ma’am?” Agent Faeley responded officially before her partner opened his fat mouth, causing her to close her eyes in embarrassment.

    “Mandy, how ya been, love?” Aster asked in a friendly manner. His cocky attitude and smile were only enhanced by his Aussie accent.

    The AD shot him a look so cold, Ana swore it could have frozen fire.  

    “Agent Aster, I acknowledge that we know each other on personal terms, but in a professional setting, I require you address me as Director, Ma’am, Sir, or Ms. Moony. Is that clear, agent?” she reprimanded as she leaned forward with her elbows on her desk, the authority in her voice almost tangible.

    “Crystal,” Agent Bunnymund responded with a smirk.

    “Good.” The word had come out as more of a threat than an agreement.

    It was a well known fact that Mandalyn I. Moony, Assistant Director, stationed at FBI headquarters, did not receive her title because of her pretty looks. She was famous throughout the bureau for her strict attitude and “take no prisoners” mentality of operation. Though outside the bureau, she was friendly and knew many agents on good terms, no one knew much about her. Everything about her was a secret, the least of which was the circumstances in which she was assigned the supervision of particular cases. No one knew why she was with the Bureau, where she was from, or if she had any family. To most, she was as mysterious as the Man in the Moon.

    “Now, the two of you were called to my office concerning matters of national importance,” the Assistant Director explained, rising from behind her desk to come around and lean against the front of it, arms folded, facing the agents. “What do you know of the criminal gang known as ‘The Big Four’?”

    “The Big Four...?” Ana asked, slightly confused.

    “They’re a collection of the greatest criminal minds of the age,” Aster jumped in to explain. “Not much is known about them. Rumors say they’ve been working the underground system for years, but only recently surfaced as world wide celebrities. They’re known mostly for their heists and hackings of major museums and corporations. No one knows what they do with the money from the thefts, or the purpose of the chaos caused by hacking the systems, but they’re a phenomenon in the media, world wide. The job putting them on the map was the famous disappearance of a number of paintings by Rembrandt, Degas, and Manet from the British Archives. It was the first time they allowed themselves to be sean by security footage, causing an uproar from the public and politics, alike.

    “After the same group were identified as the ones who withdrew over two billion dollars from the Manson & Co. Insurance company’s private accounts, the media dubbed them ‘The Big Four,’ a title which they’ve seamed to embrace. The most recent activity of theirs which was publicized happened to be a stunt they pulled off in Las Vegas. They hung the CEOs of a major corporation-- who were later found out to be embezzling and with holding money from their stockholders’ shares-- by their feet from the tip of the Luxor Pyramid, while stashing millions of the embezzled cash in the vegetation at the bottom of the pyramid for the public to find.”

    Mandalyn couldn’t help the smile that slid across her face. “I see you’ve done your homework.”

    “Not really, ma’am. Just keep up with the news,” Aster responded, flashing his boss a smile.

    “Yes, alright. We know who they are,” Ana interjected, pressing to move on with the subject. “But what do they have to do with us?” She motioned to make clear she was talking about her and her partner.

    “Good question agent,” the AD proclaimed as she walked back behind her desk to press a button, resulting in the projection of a holographic screen above the desk. Displayed on the screen was a case file labeled _Case Number AB84: The Big Four_.  “The reason I’ve brought you two into my office today was because you’ve been assigned their case.”

    “What? You’ve got to be kidding me!” Aster protested. “Mandy, Ana and I are already up to our grundies in the Baskerville case. You can’t take us off it when we’re this close--” the Australian’s argument was cut short.

    “What did I say about addressing your superiors, agent?” Director Moony barked.

    “Sorry, ma’am, it’s just--”

    “Agent Bunnymund, I understand this may seam unfair and unexpected,” the intensity of the director’s tone was thick, weighing down the rest of the room and effectively grabbing the agents’ attentions with the seriousness of the situation, “but you two are the best team we’ve got. Ever since the FBI’s been assigning partners in the late 70s, you have been the most exemplary team we’ve ever seen, with the most closed cases and justified arrests recorded to date. This band of criminals have jumped to the top of our list within the past year. With the prior agents assigned to this case being unable to continue with the investigation, we’ve decided to call in the best. We’ve decided to call in you.

    “I hope you two can understand the severity of the situation. These wanted criminals have become public icons, causing more chaos and disruption than we’re used to. The sooner they’re brought in, the better. Your current case will be reassigned to another team while the both of you are to continue this one. Now, do I make myself clear?” She stared down the two subordinates in front of her until she received affirmations from both. “Good,” she continued, “Now, moving on, I’m going to be debriefing the both of you. After which, you’ll collect all the documents and information we have concerning the case from Nick. I suggest you do your research. You’re flying out next week to investigate our only lead.”

    Aster and Tiana looked to each other once more. No going back now. And with that, the AD taped the screen still projected above the table, opening the file and releasing a tirade of documents. She selected one, pulling up a mug shoot of a girl in her early teens.

    “Merida DunBroch. Codename: Big Red,” Mandalyn began. _Big Red, no wonder_ , Aster thought as he looked at the girl. Her face was surrounded by a forest of ginger curls, long enough to spiral down her back. Her bright blue eyes sparkled with a defiance that matched the smirk on her lips. It was as if she was challenging the people on the other side of the camera. As if she was saying she knew something they didn’t.

    The director continued, all the while pulling up various pictures and documents to give visuals and references to the agents.

    “Demolitions expert and trained sniper. This picture was taken wen she was brought in for suspicion of arson when she was thirteen. She’s heir to the great DunBroch dynasty, rooted in Scotland. The family gained its fortune in the plasma weapons industry during the Big Boom. The dynasty has production satellites located all over the world. After some behavioral issues, their daughter was sent to a prestigious boarding school in New York a couple of years ago. She was doing well, from what we could gather, that is until she was expelled.”

    “For what?” Aster cut in, curious.

    “She somehow managed to blast a hole in her dorm room large enough to drive a mini van through.” Aster smirked as an image of a half-standing dorm room filled the screen. “After her expulsion, a few bodyguards were sent by the DunBrochs to retrieve their daughter. However, when they reached the school, she was gone. It’s assumed she ran away, not wanting to return to her family in Scotland. Understandable, really, since it’s confirmed that she was part of an arranged marriage, planned by her parents.

    “She later managed to join the American military when she was sixteen. There, she quickly rose through the ranks, obtaining the title ‘Major’ by the time she turned nineteen. Records show that she was the best sniper of the force at the time. Interviews with her squadron members give us reports stating she can shoot the wings off a fly sitting a mile away. It’s believed that she received a portion of her demolitions and education from the military, as well her weapons experience. Soon after she turned nineteen, she went AWOL and we heard nothing from her until she resurfaced as a member of the Big Four, a year later.”

    She choose another file, bringing up a blurred picture of a boy jumping over the roof of a building.

    “Hiccup Horrendous Hadock III. Codename: The Dragon. Diligently trained in stealth and the newest subdivision of parkour known as ‘Lifting,’ he’s said to be the team’s tech head.”

    “I’m sorry, ‘lifting’?” Ana asked, confused by the term.

    “Yes, lifting. With the release of airo-sneakers, there came the development of a new type of gymnastic abilities used to jump and climb over buildings. The small dose of anti-gravity infused in the shoes, combined with the incredible speed these kids can obtain, allows them to essentially ‘lift’ from the walls and concrete they practice on, giving them the essence of flight.”

    “Whoa...,” Aster breathed, taken aback by the footage now on the screen of kids practicing what his boss had just described.

    “You’ve got that right, agent. Hiccup seams to be at the top of the class, too. Damn brat’s impossible to catch on foot.”

    “So that’s why he’s called ‘The Dragon’?” Agent Faeley asked, “Because he can fly?”

    “That, and the one identifying mark we have for him is a dragon tattoo, covering his back, chest, and neck areas,” the director explained. She pulled up a clearer picture of a boy with shaggy, brown hair wearing a green A-shirt, allowing for enough bare skin to show portions of a swirling black tattoo.

    “Moving on, records show his intelligence to be off the charts. He was accepted to go to Eastland High when he was thirteen. It’s that school in California you’ve probably heard about, cranking out the most advanced minds the world’s ever seen. His technological abilities are unmatched, sometimes even exceeding E.T. capabilities. He can hack into almost any computer system on the planet, as well as a few off.

    “He’s the youngest of the group, being only nineteen. He grew up in a small sector of Philadelphia, where we believe his family to still reside. We don’t know exactly what caused him to join the group, only that after attending Eastland High, he dropped out his senior year for unknown reasons and has kept little to no contact with anyone from his hometown since.”

    The AD flipped to another file, opening it up to a document containing a different set of background information. The space meant for a picture was blank.

    “Rapunzel Corona. Codename: The Princess. Only minimally experienced with stealth, she’s known for her incredible and unique ability to gather intelligence.”

    “Unique how?” Aster asked. The directors response was to pull up a collection of pictures on screen. Most depicted scenes of a man and woman rendezvousing in a wide array of locations. Each man and woman were different per picture, the only constant being every woman was always stunningly beautiful. The photos that caught the agents’ attentions were the few up front. They showed images of...explicit behavior, to say the least, involving two mostly naked bodies. “Oh...,” was all the male agent could say, obviously getting the message, before the assistant director continued.

    “She’s incredibly skilled with disguises, as well, which is how she manages to... get around so easily. It’s said her own parents wouldn’t recognize her if she didn’t want them to. She’s been able to gather an astonishing amount of dangerous information in this way from a wide range of unknowing informants: male, female, as well as E.T. We’re not entirely sure what she actually looks like, since every photo we have of her is different.”

    “How are you sure it’s even her, then?” Tiana asked incredulously.

    “Iris scanning,” came the explanation. “It’s more accurate than finger prints, especially since technology can now decipher irises hid behind contacts. Every scan has been an identical match.

    “Moving on to lineage. We’ve recently been able to discover that she’s the missing daughter and heir to the Corona family’s fortune. The Corona family rose to its level of esteem with its market production of the chemical, glittson. Glittson is the main ingredient in the currents production of almost all widely used lighting sources, as well as a few choice drugs on the market. Ever heard of DreamSand? Well, glittson’s one of the main ingredients, in case you were wondering.

    “Records show that their daughter went missing when she was five years old. The family spent years and thousands of dollars in an attempt to find her. They never did. That is, until Rapunzel gained her claim to fame as a part of the Big Four. It isn’t concrete, but we do have evidence that The Princess has had contact with her family over the last year or so.”

    The director opened a fourth file to reveal a blurry picture of a young man, his face mostly hidden by a hood and glasses.

    “And last but not least, Jackson Overland. Codename: Frost. Ring leader of the group, he’s a Frixtar from Galaxy Sector 8.”

    “Hold up,” Aster cut off his boss with an excessive amount of sarcasm. “‘Codename: Frost,’ as in Jack Frost, the fairy tale? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

    Mandalyn let out a frustrated sigh at the outburst of immaturity, “Yes, Aster. Jack Frost, like the fairy tale. Unfortunately, the media branded these thieves before we gave them enough attention to label them. And, since they seam to have accepted these nicknames openly, it is only appropriate to record them as such in their case files. If you’d like to listen, Agent, then you would find out why his name is as it is.”

    Aster leaned back in his chair with a smile, throwing his arms up in mock surrender.

    With another sigh, the assistant director continued, “He’s the oldest of the group, being twenty-two in Earth years. His particular kind of E.T. have a unique ability to control certain aspects of the weather while residing in the Earth’s atmosphere, specifically the cold. They also have an almost identical physical resemblance to the human species, making it difficult to identify them in a crowd. Our reports show he’s head of reconnaissance, apparently an expert in covering his tracks and blending into a crowd, as if he was never there. We can hardly find any more info on him and virtually nothing on his history. Sometimes it’s as if he doesn’t even exist.”

    “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Aster asserted, stopping the director’s scrolling through pictures. The agent leaned forward, focussing on the picture before him. It was yet another grainy picture of the same kid, looking over his shoulder in the direction of the camera. His hair was hidden by a hat with the rim pulled low, but his eyes where still visible. Those piercing, ice blue eyes were unmistakable.

    “That’s him,” he muttered without really thinking.

    “I’m sorry, Agent, something you’d like to share?” Mandalyn asked.

    “No, it’s just... That kid,” the agent began, lost in thought. “I’ve dealt with him before. Back when I was a police officer in Baltimore, I’d always have to bring him in for one thing or another. He really was one of those good for nothing kids. The kind you could never really do anything with, the kind you could never trust. Damn bugger was always trying to have a go at me. Didn’t know he’d become something like this, though.”

    “I see,” was the director’s response. “Well, that does give us certain information. Hopefully, these previous interactions mean you’ll have a better time dealing with him, face to face.”

   _I doubt it, sheila_ , the agent thought to himself. This kid was the whole reason Aster had quit the force to begin with, leading him to join the FBI. The agent had hoped he’d never have to see see the bloody drongo after that. Looks like he was wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooo, just thought I'd say I know Rapunzel's background/role/whatever is a little risque (don't hurt me!) but it makes a lot more sense later on, I promise. Stick around and you'll find out why! Also, in case you didn't pick it up, I made MiM a kick ass boss lady, because I just love those kind of characters. ^.^ (I watch a lot of NCIS. Can you tell?)  
> P.S. There's a not so subtle, tiny Sherlock reference in there. Can you see it?


	3. 'Just Kids'

  
**Chapter 2: 'Just Kids'  
**

    “Ah! These hoons aren’t worth all this trouble. I mean, jus’ look at ‘em! They’re  only kids, for Christ’s sake,” Agent Aster let out in frustration. He had managed to draw out his complaining concerning their reassignment through the entire week following their meeting with the AD. Even after he and his partner had boarded the aircraft now waiting to carry them to their new case, he managed to bring up the argument. As if convincing his partner on the matter would do anything to change their circumstances.

    “Those ‘kids’ have stolen over 3 billion in uni-cash through theft and scandal in the past six months alone,” Ana responded calmly as she flipped through the pages of a complementary magazine.

    “Still more trouble than it’s worth, if yeh ask me. ‘Specially that Frost kid,” he said, still disgruntled.

    “So tell me Bunny, is it all E.T.s that get you so flustered, or just this one?” Agent Faeley asked curiously as she set the magazine aside, switching to the use of nicknames.

    “Bah, Tooth, you know that’s not true,” Aster replied, trying his best to settle comfortably in his small passenger seat. “Blimey, how d’they expect us to fit in these damn things,” he cursed under his breath.

    “Well, looking at your arrest record for the past three years, you’d think you have some vendetta against extraterrestrials,” his partner stated, referring to his first comment.

    “They had it coming, every one of them. And you know that. You know E.T.s, Tooth, they’re not like you or me. They’re...”

    “Different?” she asked, her tone turning cold as she focused her brilliantly violet eyes on her partner.

    “Exactly,” Bunnymund agreed as he began an epic struggle for dominance with the seat belt. “Besides, are you gonna tell me that the thing with the Avenatae in Detroit wasn’t personal for you?” A slight strain had entered his voice as the safety straps he was bravely battling began to win on the offensive.

    “No, actually, it wasn’t,” his partner snapped. “You know, I don’t think you understand what it is that we do, Agent Bunnymund,” she continued with her own air of sarcasm. “We protect the civilians of this country, human _and_ E.T. alike. All I’m saying is that you should act like it,” she finished before snatching up her magazine again. They sat in silence for a few more minutes with Ana hiding behind her magazine. Aster finally managed to strap his bulk into the seat and decided to ignore the tension he’d created between them. The other passengers continued to board, filing past them awkwardly.

    Ana simmered at the ignorance at her partner. Out of all the pigheaded men in the FBI, how’d she managed to be stuck with the most insensitive one as her partner? Her frustration quickly dissipated, though, as she glanced over her magazine at Aster comically squeezed into the seat beside her.

    Agent Bunnymund was really a rather a large fella. Not from fat or laziness, mind you, but just from pure bulk. Standing at six foot, one, and a master of Tai Chi, his thick muscles and broad chest meant he had little space to fit into when it came to standard commercial aircraft seats. At the sight of his muscles outlined in a thin, dark grey t-shirt, it was easy to see how he could be such a ladies’ man. Ana, though she never gave much mind to it, supposed her partner was handsome, with chiseled features and bright green eyes.

    The sleeves of Agent Bunnymund’s shirt where short enough to show twin, black tribal tattoos on each of his arms, circling the bicep. These were normally covered up while at headquarters with the long sleeved button-ups required for desk work. His hair, which he usually wore down to cover his forehead in professional settings, such as at the Bureau, had premature grey at the temples. Not that it made him look old, but rather, added to his charm and mystique. When he working in the field, or off work, his hair was swiped back in a spiky fashion, revealing a pattern of tattoos on his forehead to match the ones on his arms. He wore leather cuffs, carved with similar designs to his set of tattoos, around his wrists that, as far as Ana knew, never came off. Another item that seamed to never be absent was the charm hung around his neck with leather string. It was a wooden carving in what looked to be the shape of a boomerang.

    Agent Faeley never asked about these identifying marks or accessories,  
and her partner never mentioned them, so their meaning remained a mystery. Not that she needed to know. They were close, as partners should be, without having to dig into each other’s pasts. That wasn’t necessary for the job. Trust was essential, so if Tooth needed to know, Bunny would tell her, and she left it at that.

    “On the bright side, though, the director seems to be warming up to you again,” Tooth mentioned with a small smile, knowing it would grab her partner’s attention.

    He let out a chuckle, “Yeah, sure seemed like it, didn’t it?”

    “What’d you do to her to get her that upset with you to begin with?” Tooth was curious as she put down her magazine once more.

    “Ah, now that, sheila, is between the two of us. I doubt you’d want the details, anyways,” he said, brushing off the question.

    Truthfully, Agent Bunnymund was just pleased his partner was no longer fuming. She could be quite terrifying when upset. Her determination while on a case was something to be admired, though. As Bunny looked at his partner, he suddenly realized how beautiful she was. Guess it’s an easy to forget detail when you’ve spent so long with someone. Something like that wasn’t important when you were deep in a case, on the chase, running for your or someone else’s life. But every now and again the realization would hit and you’d have just enough time to think, _How could I not see this before?_ before it disappeared to the back of the mind once more.

    Tooth had always been curvy and pale with the brown tint of a southeast asian. Despite her apparent ethnicity, she had large, round eyes that had a comforting quality about them. Her hair, a soft brown with waves and a feathered look, was held back loosely with a peacock blue tie, leaving a few strays to flit about her face. Her blouse was a deep aqua that set off the pale pink shadow around her eyes. Unnoticed by most, their stood out a peculiar pattern of dotted scaring on the backs of her hands that seamed to have no purpose or cause.

    She always wore gold, tear-drop earrings that were just large enough to be noticed, but not large enough to be obnoxious. These were accompanied by a gold necklace at her throat and a collection of gold bands circling her wrists and ankles. Bunny couldn’t help but feel these had some sort of meaning, but usually shrugged the thought off with a self-reminder of the “need to know” rule.

    The thing that stood out most about Tooth, aside from her gentle beauty, was the stunning crystalized pinkish-purple color of her eyes. They were mesmerizing, their effect being that of uncut rose quartz, refracting light in a million directions.

    What was even more surprising than her looks, was her seemingly split personality. Most of the time, she was a kind and caring creature. But on a case, she was something else entirely, something dangerous. She had a tendency to establish an aura of absolute intensity about her when in the field. And then, there was the last personality. This one involved the obliteration of her patience, giving her an irritated sibling persona. This was brought on whenever in the presence of her partner’s infuriating overconfidence.

    Bunny shook himself out of the daze brought on by staring at his travel companion.

    “So, you ready to take down these criminals?” Tooth asked.

    “You mean these kids?” Bunny scoffed. “Yeah, how about you and I just get this over with quickly, eh? Then we can get back to a real case.”

    Tooth couldn’t help but smile at her partner’s cockiness as a flight attendant came by, telling them to prepare for take off. The vents of the cabin soon opened, releasing an anesthetic. With one last announcement from the captain, the agents and passengers were soon asleep for the two hour flight to Los Angeles, California on _TransBoeing’s_ Class #3401 jumbo plasma passenger jet.

* * *

  
    “Hold up,” Agent Bunnymund began as he sat in the driver’s seat of an FBI standard hover car, filling through the reports on their case as auto-drive steered the vehicle. “How do we know they’re going to hit this place, again?”

    His partner let out yet another frustrated sigh as she commented, “I thought you already knew all about the Big Four. What with all the information you spewed when you  were playing ‘teacher’s pet’ with the director.”

    Ana’s impatience with her partner seemed especially exaggerated today. This was mostly due to her serious look, an effect of her hair being scrapped back into a severe ponytail more appropriate for operating in the field.

    The two were suited up in bullet proof vests overtop the standard field uniform of chemically re-enforced jean and t-shirt fabric. Their guns were secure in their holsters and their badges were readily available. They were ready for field work. Specifically, field work that involved potential danger.

    “All I said was what I heard from the telly, which wasn’t much,” came Bunny’s indignant response.

     “Well, it’s in the report, if you had bothered to read it. They marked the museum as their next hit.” When all Ana received was a blank stare, she elaborated, “They left their calling card.” Agent Faeley then reached into the back seat of the car to pull out an evidence bag from the select collection of files and reports they had brought with them. She handed the bag and the evidence inside to her partner.

    “And what’s this s’pposed to be?” he asked as he inspected the object in his hands.

    “I believe the reports call it a ‘tarot card’?” Ana replied. “Part of some card game that was apparently practiced about a century or two ago.”

    Agent Bunnymund looked at the card in his hands. It was really just a large piece of heavy card stock. Or maybe it was the old-fashioned paint that made it heavy. An elaborate design of a wheel, turning in the sky, was painted in thick oil paints on one side with the title “Wheel of Fortune” labeling it on a banner in the lower margin. He flipped it to the other side to find a solid blue background with a red four splashed across it. In smaller red lettering was the day’s date and a time reading a few hours from the current time.

    “How do we know it’s theirs?”

    “Their past couple of heists were all marked before hand with a card similar to that one. They haven’t missed one yet. On each card, there’s a painted design with a red four, date, and time of the robbery on the back. They’re also all marked with DNA samples from each of the Big Four members,” Ana explained.

    Aster let out a whistle. “We have their DNA, their names, their pictures, and all this technology. You’d think they’d’ve been caught them by now.”

    Ana smirked at her partner’s arrogance. “According to the reports, they’ve proven themselves to be a bit more trickier than that.”

    “Wait a sec,” Aster commented looking back at the card with realization. “Why’s it on paper? It should be a chip, a hologram, or at least holo-paper. But this is the real deal. No one’s used real paper in about five decades. Where’d they even get it?”

    Needless to say, the human race and...guest species found regular paper to be obsolete, harmful to the environment, and a major source of waste after the introduction of certain technologies during the Big Boom. Information and documents could now easily be stored on nano-bytes of data. Anything and everything could essentially be digitized and stored on the wide range of dirt cheap devises, such as the iPad 8 through 20, Kindle Maximus, The Pocket Reader, etc. Other developments, such as holograms and hologram-paper completely eradicated the need for paper of any kind. Holo-paper could store any information in a paper-like setting, essentially creating a 3-D, electronic piece of paper. Only this version could be completely wiped clean, allowing for millions of uses. When it’s usefulness ran out, the holo-paper could be deconstructed from its original 2-D form into its millions of nano-bot components which could then be re-used in the production of other devises.

    As a result of this increasing replacement of paper with technology, the Library of Congress had expanded by 2113 to the size of twelve city blocks in order to house an enormous collection of traditional paper books. This act was viewed as a preservation of history. It’s one of the few places left, other than the personally owned collections, where anyone’s able to feel, smell, and read traditionally bound books.

    “Hmm,” Ana now contemplated the card, too, having apparently not realized its medium before. “I don’t know. The reports never said...”

    Just then the car came to a stop, cutting their conversation short. The vehicle had parked itself outside Las Angeles’s world renowned museum of art, The Baton. Established in 2121 as a gift from a friendly E.T. planet, the museum contained priceless artifacts. These included an entire section dedicated to artistry jewelry containing gems and stones either no longer found in Earth mines, or only found on other planets. One of these pieces, the Hope Diamond, was found a week before with a tarot card wedged between the glass panes of its show case. Since then, the famous necklace had been moved to the steel vaults of the museum and the building closed to the public.

    The two agents stepped out of their vehicle to find a hoard of police officers and their hover vehicles positioned outside the main entrance of the museum. A sectioned S.A.W.A.T. (Specially Advanced Weapons And Tactics) team had even been called in and its members were now marching all over the place, like a miniature army preparing for battle. The whole scene was surprising, really, considering the heist wasn’t supposed to happen for another couple of hours.

    Aster and Ana quickly located the chief of the police force present at a temporary station of operations that had been set up under a foldable awning near by. He and his commanding officers were all huddled around a portable hover table covered in e-documents and blue prints printed on holo-paper, conversing on low tones about strategies and possibilities. As the two agents approached the discussion, the chief looked up.

    “Ah, Agent Bunnymund. Agent Faeley. Glad to have you here,” the chief greeted as he stepped away from the table and offered his hand. “I’m LAPD Sector 2 Chief, Fishlegs Ingerman.”

    The chief was a large man, though not quite in the way Agent Aster was. He definitely was an example of the stereotype concerning policemen and doughnuts, though the comedic effect of this was thrown off by his intimidating height, tall enough to rival Agent Aster’s. He had small, hazel eyes and blonde hair that stuck out in angles from under his uniformed hat.

    “And this, agents, is my second in command: Meatlug Gronckle,” the chief introduced, motioning to a woman, just as large as the chief.

     _Guess L.A. has a thing for weird names_ , Bunnymund couldn’t help but think as the group exchanged muttered pleasantries.

    “Didn’t know they were letting E.T.s on the force now,” Aster commented, indicating to the Chief’s second in command.

    Though obviously female and human- _oid_ , it was clear she wasn’t human. She had brown, leathery skin. Not leathery like an old man that spent too much of his youth in the sun. But leathery like a purse, or a pair of boots. Thick, inhumanly brown, wrinkled, and dotted with dark purple growths that stood out like meerkat holes in the middle of the Savannah. When she opened her mouth, a shark-like army of jagged teeth were revealed. She had an unsightly, thick, log of a tail, that looked more like the abdomen of an insect than the tail of an advanced species. However, even that was a welcoming sight compared to her unsettling yellow eyes, which were slitted like a cat’s. Not that her gaze was intense or intimidating, but her eyes were simply inhuman, which was enough to make any one uneasy.

    His comment got Agent Aster a cold look from his partner.

    “Actually, California’s been the first to approve interspecies integration within the police and security force. The law was passed about 1.2 years ago and integration within the state is eight-five percent complete” Fishlegs said, matter-of-factly. “Best decision it’s made in quite a few decades, too, I might add,” he continued as he moved to stand by his second in command, both sets of eyes challenging the agent. “Hope it won’t be a problem for the both of you?”

    “Not at all,” Ana cut off whatever response her disgruntled partner was about to make, shoving past him as the group made its way back to the operations’ table. “So what’s the situation, Chief?” Ana asked, bringing the conversation around to the subject at hand.

    “Nothing much,” the chief answered as he started to shuffle through files and documents once more. “We have the area surrounded, heavy concentration in sectors six, twelve, fourteen, and eight. Everyones armed with grade four standard police weapons, hand rifles with level six blasting power and level eight accuracy. That’s about all we can do at the moment. We’re not really sure what to prepare for, coming from these thieves.”

    “Surrounded?” Aster asked, finally joining the group. “You don’t have anyone inside?”

    “We received an anonymous  message at about twenty-two hundred hours last night,” Officer Meatlug informed, handing the two agents an e-pad with the mentioned message already on-screen. Her voice sounded like something akin to feeding gravel through a wood chipper.

    “From the Big Four?” Ana asked, taking the device.

    “We’re not sure, but considering its contents, we’d call it a safe bet,” Officer Meatlug said.

    “What’s it say?” Aster asked, trying to get a look over his partner’s shoulder at the message.

    “That all entrances, doors, and windows of the building were barred,” the Chief informed, “leaving us no way in. That the security guards stationed inside for the night have been restrained. And that if we made any attempt to enter the museum, they’d blow the whole thing, along with the surrounding block and a half, to smithereens.”

    “You really think they’d be able to follow through on something like that?” Ana asked, incredulously.

    The question was met with a disapproving look from the Chief, “You’ve never dealt with people of this caliber, have you agent?”

     “Not only do we fully believe they’re capable,” Meatlug interjected the chief’s dramatics, “But we believe that they’d be more than willing to cary out their threat, resulting in injuring and killing multiple civilians and officers, alike.” She pushed a schematic of the museum forward, the blue prints automatically flashing through the different possibilities and outcomes of various speculated arrangements of dynamite and explosives within the building. Each resulted in the entire building collapsing, or serious damage to the infrastructure.

    “So what’s the plan, then?” Aster asked, all joking and sarcasm finally melting away completely, revealing a furrowed brow and gravely serious demeanor.

    “You’re lookin’ at it,” the chief answered, waving a thick arm to the surrounding force of officers and fire arms. “Right now, our only options are to surround the building and try to catch the thieves on their way out, or in, if we can manage it. A few exits and windows have been checked, confirming their note to be true, so far. We’re not exactly sure how they’re even going to be able to get out, so we’ve secured the entire area. We’ve even got the back covered, though there’s no windows or exits.”

    “Why is that?” Ana cut in.

    “The back area’s were they’ve got the paint exhibits and the safes. The lack of windows not only protects the artwork from outside light and fading, but also makes access to the vaults more difficult.”

    “Speaking of which,” Aster couldn’t help but comment, “Why keep the diamond here, anyways? Wouldn’t it be safer if it were moved somewhere more secure?”

    “Nah, too risky,” the chief responded, “Could’t take the chance it would be intercepted en route.”

    “So we’re just gonna sit here while they go’n steal the diamond?” Aster asked with a mixture of sarcasm and disbelief.

    “Nothing we can really do without potentially endangering civilians, except hope the safe holds up and catch them on their way out,” the chief said with a shrug.

    The two agents looked over the documents, murmuring to each other in hushed tones. After asking the Police Chief and his Second a few more questions, they agreed the area was secure and the handling of the situation adequate. They quickly gave the chief their approval and promise of keeping a close watch. With a nod, the chief gave his permission to the agents to inspect the premises. Agents Faeley and Bunnymund started to make their way around the building.

    On their rounds of inspection, the agents asked more questions from the present officers, gaining information and a better idea about their positions and orders, were anything to get out of hand. They circled the building and checked the outer edges of the surrounding area, looking for escape routes, security cameras, electronic bugs, ect. When they made it to around to the back of the building, they found the Chief’s second to be correct in the layout having no exits or windows in the rear. When the agents made their way to the front of the building again, they found a gathering crowd of spectators pressing themselves against the barriers set up by the police.

    “Woah, woah, woah. Now, what’s this?” Aster asked the Chief, gesturing to the sight in front of him, as the agents approached the operations’ table once more.

    The chief looked up to the agents, then threw a glance behind him at the gathering crowd. He quickly turned back to the documents before him, dismissing the ever increasing hoard of civilians.

    “It’s their audience, agent,” he said without looking up from the schematics in front of him.

    “Excuse, me? Their audience?” Aster asked, obviously lost on the situation.

    The chief let out a sigh of impatience and finally looked up at the two before him before continuing, “Yes, agent, their audience. Every time these damn thieves mark their next hit, their media coverage increases by about fifty-two percent. Meaning, every time this group hits someplace, they now have a, a-- I guess you could call it a fan-base to come out a watch the spectacle. It’s sick, really, how these few of the FBI’s most wanted are now public icons. But,” he gave a shrug as he turned back to his work, “there’s nothing we can really do about it, except keep them out of the immediate area.”

    Aster let out a frustrated sigh as he turned away from the table. “Great. Well this certainly isn’t going to help.” He spoke mostly to himself as he surveyed the crowd, which consisted of mostly younger buggers: college kids, teens, the like. Aster could sense a buzz of excitement coming from the crowd. Some had even brought digi-signs and holographic posters. “Civilians crowding the area.”

    “Means the cops are going to be more cautious,” Ana cut in, finishing her partner’s thoughts, both minds traveling along the same path. “Means we have to be cautious, too,” she added a stern warning while shooting her partner the evil eye.

    “Oh, come on, love. It’s me we’re talking about,” Aster gave a shinning smile, which only exaggerated the sarcastic arrogance in his voice.

    “Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about,” she said with a roll of her eyes. The two turned back to the matter at hand and looked towards the museum.

    “Anything to report?” Aster asked, his eyes serious as he shot his partner a look.

    Ana contemplated the walking, talking essence of arrogance that toward over her, deciding weather or not to give him the information. She knew what he’d do with it, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop him once he found out. Then again, he was her partner...

    “Come on, shiela. Think about it. If there’s a way in there, we can get in, catch these lil’ rascals, nip this thing in the bud, and get out. Case closed. Then, we don’t even have to worry about the civilians.”

    “Bunny, you heard what they said. The place is rigged to blow if anyone sets foot inside the building.”

    “Pshhh. Really, Tooth? You really think these kids would risk blowing themselves to pieces? That theory only standing if they could actually have access to that amount of explosives. Rather unlikely, doncha think? Think about all the cases cops have lost their grip on because they listened to an empty threat. You really think kids are capable of those kinds of things?”

    “I don’t know, Bun. The chief and his second seemed pretty convinced.”

    “Agh! Come on, Tooth! _THEY’RE. KIDS._ Barely out of their diapers. Don’t you want to get this case closed fast? Tha’s never gonna happen if we just sit back and wait for them to get away.”

    Tooth contemplated her partner. She had to admit, anyone not involved with a cartel or mob getting that amount of explosives, much less a bunch of kids, was pretty far fetched. She turned her frustrated gaze back towards the building and the surrounding police force. While investigating a case that required FBI agents to become involved in any crime scenes or potentially hostile situations, their immediate line of command came from the highest ranking officer already involved with said case. That meant, for the time being, they were under the orders of the present Police Chief, Fishlegs Ingerman, who had ordered no one enter the building while it was still under surveillance. However, Bunny was right. With all the cops refusing to enter the building because of the threat, the criminals would let their guards down while inside. Meaning, if the two of them could get inside, they could locate and apprehend the fugitives pretty easily, bringing the case-- and their crimes-- to a close right then and there. But...they would still be disobeying a direct order.

    Tooth let out an agitated sigh.

    “Alright,” she saw the smile start to break out on her partner’s  face. “But,” she held up a threatening finger, “If this doesn’t follow through, Bunny, the heat falls on you, alright? This is your idea, anyways.”

    “Too right!” he let out a laugh. “Come on, shiela. How many times have my plans actually fallen through?”

    “Twelve.”

    “Bah, none of those were my fault,” he said dismissively. She raised an eyebrow.

    “Portland?”

    “Alrigh’, well, maybe one.”

    Tooth couldn’t help but smile at her partner’s confidence. It was the one thing she could depend on him for.

    “So, where are we goin’ in?” he asked, the excitement at the prospect of action edged his voice.

    She nodded her head towards the right side of the building. “There’s a shut down basement entrance hidden underground that’s not on any of the schematics the police have. We should be able to make our way in through there.”

* * *

  
    Jackson Overland Frost looked at the pills in his hand. Three pills. Count them. One. Two. Three. Three, shinning, white pills, whispering a promise. He closed his eyes, asking them to keep their promise, and tossed them back, forcing down a dry swallow.

    He waited a few seconds for the meds to kick in, and then his vision suddenly turned hazy. Blurry images flashed through his mind’s eye. Noises and voices, distorted as if his ears were stuffed with cotton, flashed through his mind with the images. It was all a dimmed kaleidoscope of blurred colors and sounds, twisting around him. It spun faster and faster, until he was in a vortex of indistinct sounds and forgotten pictures. And then, nothing. Blissful silence, and a grateful blankness where the colors used to be.

    Jack opened his eyes, and was confused by what he saw. Where was he? He couldn’t remember. Who was he? He couldn’t quite remember that either. What was going on? He was dazed and confused, staring into space, trying to remember where he was as a strange static roared in his ears. He couldn’t hear anything. Couldn’t recognize anything. Couldn’t feel anything. He was  completely numb.

    “Jack.”

    A voice filtered through the static in his head. It was distant and hard to make out.

    “Jack!”

    The voice was clearer this time, louder, and closer. The static only seemed to increase in volume, as if it was trying to keep the voice out.

    “Jack!”

    A hand landed on his shoulder, ripping him out of his daze and dropping him back into the real world, no parachute or mattress. Just hard reality. The present came flooding back to him in an instant. _That’s right._ They were in the Baton Museum, Los Angeles, getting ready for one of their-- what Hiccup had jokingly dubbed-- “shows.”

    Jack turned around abruptly in his surprise to find a set of large, familiar, friendly green eyes. He let out a sigh of relief.

    “Hey, Rapunzel.”

    “Are you ok?” she asked as concern furrowed her brow.

    He gave small chuckle, “‘Course I am, Punz. You know me.” He flashed a reassuring smile at her. “I was just...you know, going over the plan.”

    She wasn’t convinced. “You were taking them, weren’t you? Your pills?”

    He could feel the smile as it slid from his face. It fell to land on the floor, splattering everywhere, the fakeness of it sprinkling their toes. The image was shattered.

    “Punzie, I just--”

    She cut him off with a disappointed sigh, “Really, Jack? You took them _now_? You know better than that.” She moved forward to hold his face in her hands, forcing him to look at her. “How many?”

    He avoided her eyes. He couldn’t help the feeling of shame that started to creep into his heart. “I don’t know. Not that--”

    “ _How many?_ ” He flinched at he intensity of her words.

    “Three,” he admitted.

    “Three?!?” She let go of him to pace as she ranted. “Good God, Jack! Three pills, right before the job! What were you thinking? What if we lost you for the job? You know what happened last time. We’d be--”

    “Rapunzel, please!” The yell escaped him, having lost hold of his frustration. He continued in a voice barely above a whisper, “It-It’s getting worse.”  

    That got her attention. She spun around, mid-rant. She saw the plea on his face that he was trying to hide, and she tried to understand. She was good at that, understanding what people needed. “Jack...Why didn’t you tell--”

    “Because it’s not a big deal.” His voice was harsh, his face a mask now. He wanted to move past it, wanted to forget it. It didn’t matter, none that stuff mattered compared to what was going on now. It really wasn’t a big deal, but Rapunzel would think it was. That’s why he never mentioned it. “Let’s just forget it, ok? I’m fine now.” She looked unsure of what to do then. He could see she wanted to continue with the conversation, but they had a job to do. There wasn’t time to dwell on stupid things like this.

    So Jack shook off the rest of his stupor and shrugged off whatever he was feeling before he moved to lead Rapunzel away. “Come on, Punz, let’s just focus on the job.”

    They found the other two of their group at their predetermined point, in the stairwell under the rooftop exit. Merida and Hiccup were having a mock slap-fight, trying to keep the tension light, as the ever present deadline creeped closer. The fight broke at the sight of the other two approaching.

    “Hey, Hiccup!” Jack called out, making his tone light. “Still sporting the leather, I see?”

    Everyone was wearing black. They knew it was pretty cliche, but honestly, wearing black made them feel cool whenever they were on a job. It was also a major contribution to the “burglar” image they were all about to put forth to the world. Jack was in his trademark black hoodie and skinny jeans, looking tragically emo. Merida had on a black version of her cargo pants, millions of pockets stuffed with enough supplies and weapons to arm an infantry. Her midnight cloak and hood was hung over the banister, waiting patiently. Rapunzel wore tight leather pants, that Jack couldn’t help but notice accentuated certain areas of her physique quite nicely. She wore a rather gothic, flowing shirt that laced up the front and had her long blonde hair tucked away in a combination caplet and cowl. Her lucky frying pan was tucked safely under her arm. Hiccup, with every job they’ve come into, and for some reason still unbeknownst to the rest, was decked completely in a sort of punk biker type leather outfit, with numerous buckles, iron studs, and red symbols stamped in various places. A matching helmet with face guard rested in the corner. All of them had some sort of helmet of hood to hide their faces.

    “Of course!” Hiccup called in response, “You know how it makes my ass look!”

    Jack laughed, the confusion and concern of a few moments before having completely vanished. The only thing before him now was the job at hand.

    “And hows that?”

    “You tell me!” came the response as the team’s head of technology turned around to wiggle his leather-clad derrière at the rest of them.

    “Hmm,” Jack feigned a moment of contemplation, “Well, I’d have to say it was perky, supple, and all _around_ perfect!”

    “Haha! Don’t we all wish!” Merida called out as she gave the unprotected target a good smack.

    “You’re just jealous!” he teased as Merida danced out of his reach.

    “Alright, guys,” Jack cut in, trying to prevent another play fight form breaking out. “Let’s focus. Sound off.”

    “One.”

    “Two!”

    “Tree.”

    “And, four,” Jack finished with a smile. The sound offs were blatantly unnecessary, due to their small numbers, but the team still did it before each heist. It was a tradition for them. Kind of like crossing your fingers or wearing your lucky underwear for a test. You know it doesn’t help, but it makes you feel better for doing it anyways.

    “Okay, then. All the doors and exits blocked?”

    “Check.”

    “And check,” Merida and Hiccup both gave a mock salute.

    “And the guards?”

    “Oh, they were taken care of a while ago,” Rapunzel said, a mischievous smile spread across her face.

    “Alright, then,” Jack said with a chuckle. “Explosives?”

    “Round one’s set to blow near the front as distraction. Round two’s ready teh blast our way ou’ of here,” Merida reported proudly.

    “The trigger?”

    “Mai bow’s ‘cross teh street, ready for use. The quiver was too bulky teh make it t’rough the exit tunnels.”

    “Okay, shouldn’t be a problem. Aaaaaand, the note?”

    “Sent, received, and in no way traceable.”

    “Knew I could count on you, Hic. Alright, who’s ready for this?” Jack motioned for everyone to put their hands in the center, like some cheesy high school team before a big game. With the signal from Jack, they broke and made for the roof.

* * *

  
    Police Chief Ingerman was radioing to his troops, trying to find if anyone had caught sight of the now missing FBI agents. The last thing he had heard from them was a radio call in about a rear exit that needed to be covered as a potential escape route for the thieves. That was two hours ago; the line had been dead since. The chief looked around him, the frustration of the situation getting to him. Damn it, _he_ was supposed to be in charge! If he couldn’t even keep track of a couple of agents, what did that make him?

    A sizable crowd had formed around the Baton Inter-terrestrial Museum, meaning the chief had to increase his troops’ caution levels by point twelve. Camera crews and their vans dotted the crowds. The expanse of people and fans covered about two blocks surrounding the building. After the sun had set, visibility decreased by twenty percent, even with the blazing street lamps. News helicopters mixed with police copters as they all hovered around the building, everyone looking for the best view.

    And suddenly, what must’ve been eight search lights planted on the roof of the museum thundered to life. They cut through the night to illuminate the roof of the building like a sunrise. Policemen, chief, and civilians alike all craned their heads to look at the four, faceless figures standing at the edge of the roof, back lit by the blaring lights.

    “Heeeeeelllllloooooo, LA!” A female voice boomed around the square that held the museum. Her voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, booming through the streets and buildings. The crowd erupted in cheers and shouts. The electric barriers held the surging crowds back, and though they were re-enforced by  a group of policemen under the command of Meatlug, the Chief was starting to doubt their ability to keep out the raging civilians.

    “We said,” another voice resounded through the buildings, this one male and deep, “HEEEELLLLOOOOO!!!!”

    The crowds went ballistic. The Chief kept an eye on the surging masses pressing even harder against the barriers, threatening to break the line.

    “We are so glad teh see you here at the Baton,” a scottish accent was added to the mix.

    “Home to the Bijou du Roi, the Bleu de France,” another male voice, not quite as deep as the first, projected over the crowds.

    “The King’s Jewel.”

    “The Blue of France.”

    “Ladies and gentlemen, inside these walls is a most precious jewel that has been part of countless legends and histories for hundreds of years.”

    “It’s kind can no longer be found in any mine on, or off, Earth.”

    “It is the Hope Diamond.”

    “And tonight, we are here to perform a magic trick for you.”

    “You know, a very basic disappearing trick. Run of the mill kind of thing.”

    A low rumble of a laugh came from the crowd.

    “So we suggest you take a close look, dear audience.”

    “Look very closely, look as hard as you can.”

    “See if you can tell us how it’s done.”

    “So, without further ado, now you see it--”

    The lights on the roof suddenly went out. The street lights all died at the same moment, submerging the square in a week darkness, the light from the other blocks and buildings filtering in. A gasp went through the crowd. A split second later, all the lights came to life once more, the searchlights illuminating the now empty museum rooftop. The surrounding throng of civilians once again erupted into an uncontainable ruckus of  cheering and applause.

    “Damn it!” the chief yelled in frustration. They were not expecting an actual address to the audience, and they certainly weren’t expecting the resulting surge of civilians over the barriers. “Sector twelve, move to area eight. Fourteen needs to cover the rear,” the chief was calling command after command into the radio, attempting to establish control over the situation. “And would someone please find those damn FBI agents?!?”

* * *

  
    The said agents had actually disappeared hours ago to a good twenty feet below the street, working their way through the abandoned underground tunnels, winding beneath the museum. They had found a rusted trap door hidden underneath a dumpster in an ally behind the museum. They managed to break the badly rusted lock and force the door open, revealing a damp and rusted underground staircase.

    The two agents cautiously made their way down, guns armed and aimed with flashlights lifted to illuminate the passage ahead. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they found a rather primitive tunnel with wooden walls and a dirt floor.

    “Must’ve been a back entrance to bring in certain artifacts that couldn’t be exposed to sunlight,” Ana offered an explanation for the tunnel to her partner. The two treaded carefully as they crept on their path through the tunnel, making their way closer and closer to the museum. Any lights that were hanging along the walls were broken or dead by now, submerging the agents in darkness only broken by their waving flashlights. The tunnel seamed to stretch on forever. An unbroken silence settled between the two of them, the sounds and noises from outside were blocked out by layers of dirt, wood, and concrete.

    After what seamed like an eternity of tense silent walking, neither not really sure what to be looking for or what to expect, Aster’s light fell on something, glinting in the darkness.

    “Hey, Tooth,” Bunny whispered to his partner, the erie silence of the tunnel causing him to unconsciously keep his voice low, “You see that?”

    “Yeah,” Tooth’s voice came somewhere off to his right, “What is it?”

    “Dunno,” came the response as the two came closer and closer to the strange anomaly ahead of them. As they approached, the light from their flashlights expanded to reveal a solid wall of concrete.

    Tooth let out a breath, “Dead end.”

    “Damn it!” Bunny yelled, kicking the wall. Not that that helped much, more like gave him a sore toe, but it did give him something to do with all the adrenaline that had been building up inside of him. “We were so close!” He moved back to release his anger on the unsuspecting walls.

    While her partner threw his tantrum behind her, Tooth squinted at the wall. To anyone else, it would have looked like she was trying to see through it. She was just trying to see if she could...There!

    “Bunny,” she said, trying to get her partner’s attention, to no avail.

    He continued to bang around the place, muttering curses and opinions.

    “Bunny!” That one got his attention, spinning him around.

    “What?!”

    “We’re here,” she said tapping the wall, looking at him expectantly.

    “Shiela, what in the bloddy ‘ell are you goin’ on about?”

    “Bunny, this tunnel continues on to open up to one of the store rooms, _inside_ the museum,” she said excitedly, as if he wasn’t grasping something obvious.

    “Well that’s just spiffy, but in case you haven’t noticed, we can’t get through.”

    “Bunny, look at the walls,” she gestured to the wooden structure surrounding them, her impatience starting to get the better of her. “They’re made of wood.”

    “Yeah, so?”

    “So, look at it! It’s been down here for years. It’s rotted through in some places. If we can get some leverage, we can probably pry off a few of these boards. The concrete shouldn’t be too thick, so we’d be able to--”

    “To dig our way in there!” he exclaimed, finally getting the gist of what she was saying, “Oh, love, you are a beaut.” He couldn’t help but plant a big wet one on her check, which she took with a shock of surprise.

    The two began their rough dig through wood, and dirt, and concrete rubble. It took over an hour for them to make it to the other side, the dirt and gravel opening up before them to reveal a clear path. When they finally managed to reach the end of the tunnel and its entrance into the museum, the scheduled hour for the start of the heist had come an gone. Their target of world renowned thieves had already made their appearance on the top of the roof, as well as their subsequent disappearance into the building.

* * *

  
    “Ya’know, this’d be a bit easier withou’ yeh breathin’ down mai neck,” Merida commented. All her concentration was focused on the bright orange flame in front of her. She could see the thousand degree torch as it ate through the metal, just as she’d expected, through the dim glass window of her welding mask.

    “Sorry,” Jack replied, “Just didn’t think it would take this long.” He moved away to restlessly pace the wide area of the vault. They’d managed to get in the first few sets of three foot steel doors thanks to one of Hiccup’s inventions that scrambled the technology-- or something like that-- opening the locked vault. Next, came the individual safes, the doors of which were encoded _and_ locked by a physical key. A key, by which a duplicate proved impossible to acquire, despite Rapuzel’s attempts.

    --“How was I supposed to know the keeper of the keys actually took his marriage vows seriously?”--

    And that left them with Plan B, to Merida’s delight, which involved blasting their way through the tiny two foot by two foot door.

    “Ah, keep yer trousers on, Snow Ball,” she chided over the sound of her torch. “We’ve still got time.”

    After a few more seconds, Merida finally completed outlining the square trench of melted metal in the door of the safe. She set aside the torch and lifted the shield of her welding mask to look at her work. The perfect face of the steel door was now twisted and ruined, malformed and sagging, nothing like the smooth surface it once was. She couldn’t help but smirk at her handy-work. Oh, how she wished she could do the same to the rest of the world. Turn it on its side and watch it burn. Rip away from it its set ideas of cookie-cutter molds and perfect humans, to twist and melt it so their were no more molds, no more lines for her to follow or adhere to.

    She planted her hands flat against the metal inside her square, and pushed.

    “Uh oh.”

    All three heads scattered throughout the vault turned to look at her.

    “What? What is it?” Jack asked, rushing over to stand beside her.

    “Uh, nothin’ much, jus’...the door’s a bit thicker than expected,” she said, her voice tinged ever so slightly with concern.

    “ _Expected?_ Well, what do you mean by expected?” Hiccup asked, coming over to join the two.

    “Aye _mean_ Aye followed the stupid plans _you_ gave me,” she began accusingly, “An’ they said tha’ the door was s’pposed to be aboot tree inches thick, but this door’s at leas’ six.”

    “So what you’re basically saying is we’re screwed. Well that’s just dandy,” Hiccup concluded sarcastically.

    “Nah, we’re not,” she replied dismissively, “Now if you babies could quit yer greetin’ an’ let me think.”

    Merida concentrated as she contemplated the sheet of steel in front of her, half-way melded through. If she had known the door was going to be this thick, she would have brought different, more apt equipment. The torch would work on the rest of it, she was almost sure, but they didn’t really have time for that before the police outside became impatient and decided to barge in here, bomb threat or no. The first go ‘round  with the torch had nearly taken twenty-five minutes. She was racking her brain, going through her internal log of everything available to them that could help when...

    Merida’s eyes lit up as she started digging through her numerous cargo pockets, looking for just the right device. Now, if only she could find the right--there it was!

    “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” was all Hiccup could say.

* * *

  
    Agents Bunnymund and Faeley found themselves lost amongst the many levels and rooms of the Baton Museum. Going in there with a map of the building would have been a good idea. Going in there with a clue as to where to start would have been an even better idea. The agents were starting to seriously doubt the probability of success of their half-baked plan, as they spun in circles, neither sure of where to go.

    Agent Faeley suddenly stopped them in their aimless wandering, her eyes trained on the ceiling above. She was straining to catch any hint of stimulus, a tiny tremor, or more likely, a sound.

    “Bunny, I think the vaults are this way,” she motioned for her partner to follow as she made her way to the stairs.

    Nothing looked much different on the floor above, just more expanses of hallway after hallway, gallery after gallery. And then, a muffled _boom!_ from somewhere overhead broke through the silence and doubt.

    The agents glanced at each other and ran back to the stairway, bounding up one more flight of stairs. When they came to the next landing, they noticed this floor was different. There were only two big halls, one leading off into the darkness on the right, the other ending straight ahead of them in a large, steel door that stood open on its hinges, the light from inside spilling into the dark corridor.

    The agents looked to each other again as they heard voices coming from the open vault ahead of them. It sounded like they were arguing.

    “What were you thinking?”

    “Aye was thinkin’ there was no way we were leavin’ hear withou’ tha’ jewel!”

    “You could’ve damaged _that jewel_!”

    “Yeh sound like mai mother! Aye know wha’ Aye’m doin’!”

    Aster and Ana made their way slowly and cautiously towards the open safe. There were no side hallways leading off the main one, there was nowhere for the thieves to go. With a nod from his partner, Aster called out to the end of the hallway to identify themselves.

    “FBI. Agents Bunnymund and Faeley. We are armed. Come out slowly with your hands behind your head, and no one will get hurt.”

    The conversation from a few seconds before stopped, leaving the hallway in a complete and strained silence. The agents waited with bated breath, the tension building in the hallway as either side waited for the other to strike first. Aster’s heart beat had reached the speed of a racing rabbit. He looked over at his partner to see her determined face sprinkled with sweat.

    He turned to give one more warning to the hidden criminals.

    “There’s only one way out of that vault, so I’ll say it again: _Come out slowly with your hands behind_ \--”

    Gunshots erupted from the open door of the vault. The agents ducked their heads and ran the few feet back to the stair case. Aster shielded himself behind the stairwell door as Ana huddled behind the corner of the second hallway. They were shooting off their own rounds of plasma blasts blindly down the hall, no clue of whether or not they were hitting anything.

    The _bang! bang!_ of fugitive gunshots mixed with the _pew! pew!_ of federal plasma guns, the noise expanding to fill the corridor and overflow to the surrounding floors. The hallway became slightly blurry with a thin layer of dust, knocked from the surrounding walls by bullets, and illuminated every few nano-seconds by a plasma blast shooting through the hazy cloud. It was chaos as neither side knew really where they were aiming, and then suddenly, there was nothing.

    The agents realized that the sound of gunshots had stopped about a minute before they ceased their own shooting. Silence expanded to fill the corridor once more. Aster looked to his partner, trying to gauge what their nest move should be. But before he could make eye contact, a metal cartridge flew down the hallway.

    The agents had barely enough time to register that it wasn’t a grenade before the end of the device shot off, releasing a choking cloud of gas. It spread quickly to occupy the stair well and second hallway, suffocating the agents and obscuring their vision. Tears ran from Aster’s stinging eyes as he leaned against the wall, unable to breath. In his confusion and blindness, he could feel bodies pushing past him to run down the stair well. He fired blindly into the all-consuming cloud of gas, hoping he’d hit something.

    After the sound of feet on stairs had faded, he staggered to his feet, arms outstretched and searching for his partner. He managed to find her, curled against the wall, coughing, when the gas finally began to thin.

    “Come on! They went down!” he said pulling her to her feet. They ran to the stairwell and caught a glimpse of a splotch of red hair, speeding down the stairs after other figures.

    “Freeze!” Bunny called as the two agents began their decent down the stairs. The chase was on.

* * *

  
    After some delicate maneuvering and a few more fire-fights, the troop of four had managed to lose the two FBI agents, though they weren’t far behind. They were half-way to the basement and their one-shot blast to freedom when Merida came to a screeching stop at the front of the group, causing a three-theft pile up behind her.

    “Oh, shit,” Merida hissed through her teeth as realization sunk in.

    “What? What is now?” Jack asked frantically as precious seconds ticked by. They were already running behind with the unexpected shootouts taking up too much time.

    “Aye’ve gotta move the explosives,” she muttered, barely paying attention as her mind clicked through thoughts of where she’d need to move them, how much she could move without altering the original plan, how she was going to move them--

    “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Hiccup commented, helpful as ever.

    “Well wha’ did you expect, Haddock?!” she exploded, rounding on him. The stress of the job was finally getting to her. “We’ve got cops--”

    “FBI agents,” Rapunzel corrected.

    “-- on our tail! They were never supposed teh get inside the building. But here they are! Now we’ve got teh take care of them, as well as the ones ou’side. Now, you lot could just sit thear and stare, or yeh could help me move the charges!” and with that, Big Red bolted down the hall to the main entrance where the explosives were. The rest of the team exchanged a look before bolting down the corridor after her.

    The group came to the massive entrance area on the first floor of the museum. The ceiling arched high overhead with marble columns and a slick, tiled floor. A massive, oak desk stood along one side, facing the entryway doors, served as a reception area.

    After darting past the receptionist desk, Merida slid across the tiled floor of the grand entrance on the side of her pants, the image similar to a base baller sliding into home base. She came to a stop at the mountain of explosives piled behind the main doors. She wasted no time in ripping out wires and connectors.

    “Hiccup,” she called, as the the others came up behind her. She threw Hiccup a newly bundled stash of explosives. “Lead those damn coppers--”

    “FBI agents,” Rapunzel chimed in once more.

    “WHA’EVER! --down a hall, in teh a room, anywhere. Plant the charge in the air ducts, and set it off-- press the button, it’ll give yeh fifteen seconds to get your arse ou’ of there. It should collapse the ceiling trap the damn devils.”

    Hiccup gave a nod before heading down the hall, bounding off the walls to gain leverage for speed.

    “Princess,” Merida called her friend over. “Take these and the other one’s Aye’ve set and meet us in the right back corner room of the building, bottom floor. Jack, with her. If we don’ make it to yeh in fifteen minutes, or before yeh hear the blast, set the charge, and get ou’. Got it?”

    “Mer, we’re not leav--” Rapunzel began before Jack cut her off.

    “See you in ten,” he said as he grabbed Rapunzel’s arm to lead her away.

    After the two had left, Merida heard a low rumble. Damn, she thought. She forgot the cops outside would hear the charge she’d sent with Hiccup, possibly causing them to start an onslaught of the building. _No time to think about that now._

* * *

  
    Jack and Rapunzel collected the charges that had been set at the entrance to the basement earlier before booking it to the back of the building. They found the room Merida had told them about at the end of a hallway.

    “Damn it, Merida!” Jack yelled as he jiggled the handle of the door that blocked their way to potential freedom.

    “What is it?” Rapunzel asked, coming up behind him.

    “It’s locked!” Jack pounded on the door, as if he was trying to knock it from its hinges.

    “Jack, what’ve I told you?” Rapunzel asked, hands on her hips. With only an in-comprehensive stare for a response, she continued, “Nothing is ever locked.” With that, she pushed the explosives and her trusty frying pan into the astonished Jack’s hands and took out an array of long and different shaped tools from a pouch strapped around her waist before setting to work on the lock.

* * *

 

    Merida was still rigging the devises when Hiccup came running back.

    “Got them trapped in one of the offices, second floor,” he reported.

    “Front or back?”

    “Front, not enough time to lead them further back.”

    “No, tha’s good. Means they’ll go by the front after they get ou’, while we move ou’ the back.”

    “I thought we were going out through the abandoned basement?” Hiccup asked, trying to keep up with the change of plans.

    “Hiccup, tha’s how _they_ got in, meaning they know aboot it now. They would’ve radioed outside, telling the cops to block the exit. We’re blas-ing ou’ a ba’ vall now,” she explained, pliers in her mouth as she frantically twisted wires.

    “Kay, going out a back wall,” Hiccup translated the gargle. “What are we still doing here, then?”

    “I’m rigging this batch teh blow in aboot ten minutes,” she said, pulling a timer from one of her cargo pants’ pockets.

    “I thought you shooting it was the trigger to setting them off,” Hiccup noted.

    “Yeah, tha’d be fine and dandy,” sarcasm saturated Merida’s voice with the loss of her temper, “But I’m ou’ of bullets now, thanks teh the bloody cops, and we don’ have enough time teh make it teh mai bow now, anyways. So, unless yeh’d like teh stick around personally teh set off the charges, Aye suggest yeh SHUT IT!” she finished with a shout, her patience worn way past thin.

    Merida twisted the last pair of wires, completing the connection to the timer and beginning the countdown.

    “Comeon!” she ordered, dragging Hiccup out of the room. The two tore through the building to find Jack and Rapunzel in the back room with the goods and the charges, just like Merida had ordered.

* * *

  
    All Aster and Ana could see was smoke. Well, smoke and dust. The two agents had followed what they had believed to be a suspect into one of the rooms off to the side of one of the museum’s many halls. After entering the room, they had just enough time to check the corners and scan the area to find no one there, when a rumbling blast came from behind, knocking them off their feet.

    The two quickly recovered, standing upright again. Ringing filled both of their ears, making it difficult to focus on anything. Agent Bunnymund ran at the door they’d come through to find it closed. When he tried to open it, it was blocked by something on the other side. “Damn!” Aster looked around to find the room relatively intact, the explosion only knocking a few light fixtures from the ceiling, toppling over a few covered statues and paintings, and shaking the walls, causing the cloud of dust to disperse in the air. Meaning, the detonation of whatever it was had occurred on the other side of the door and is was the resulting debris was trapping them. “Damn!” he cursed again, pounding the door at the realization that they had played right into those dirty little bushrangers’ hands.  

    “Bunny, this way.” Aster heard Ana’s voice through the ringing in his ears and followed the sound through the cloud of dust to the other side of the room.    He found his partner tugging at section of iron bars that had been drilled into a window. The blast must’ve knocked them loose, causing them to lean half-way out of the window. But with the rest of the iron being drilled securely in place, she was getting nowhere.

    “Hold up, sheila,” Aster said as he pulled his partner away from the window. He aimed his gun at the bars, shooting of three rounds of plasma blasts. It was enough to knock out a few bars, allowing them enough space to climb through. Aster raised a leg, the muscles bunching up in preparation to kick out the reenforced window. When his foot made contact, the glass shattered, sending a rain of glittering shards below. Looking out the now mostly empty window, the agent found a twelve foot drop, safe enough if handled properly.

    The two agents jumped from the second story window to land with a roll. They didn’t have time to make it all the way back to the basement entrance that would be covered by police now anyways. So they ran around the front of the building, joining the hoard of policemen and police cars collected there, in the hopes that they might find out the current situation.

    Bunnymund and Faeley quickly located the chief.

    “Any update on the situation?” Ana asked as they approached him.

    “Where in Odin’s name have you two been?!” was the only response the FBI agents received from the police chief before an immense explosion rocked the ground.

    The charges positioned at the front entrance of the building had gone off, collapsing the entryway and leaving a gaping hole in the outer wall of the structure. None of the police officers or swat team were close enough for anyone to be seriously hurt. The explosion was taken as a cue to move forward, the command being radioed in by the chief. The police and S.A.W.A.T. team moved toward and through the now open doorway of the museum, like ants swarming an open lunch box, everyone keeping alert and cautious. The teams stationed near the rear of the building came swarming around to the front, leaving the back of the museum uncovered and unprotected. All the helicopters swarmed to the front entrance of the museum, to get a better view of the destruction as sirens wailed in the background

    What no one noticed was the second, smaller detonation, occurring in the back of the building a good eight minutes after the first. The commotion caused by the first distracted from smaller tremor and sound given off by the second blast. Nobody saw the swift movement of four figures leaving through gapping hole now in the back of the building and disappearing in the chaos and smoke of the larger explosion.

    “Bunnymund! Faeley!” A surprisingly familiar voice came over the heads of the force gathered in front of the museum.

    The two agents turned to see Assistant Director Mandalyn Moony marching towards them, eyes livid, with Unit Chief Nicolas St. North in tow.

    “What the _hell_ do you think you’re doing?” She spat out the furious question as she reached her subordinates.

    “Wh-What? Sir, I’m not--” Bunny began, obviously taken off guard by the appearance of his boss in the field.

    “You know damn well what I’m talking about,” she cut off his babbling. “You two just charged into that building, against _direct orders_. Do you even understand the seriousness of the situation? We have Class A criminals inside who have already stated they’d be more than happy to eradicate all these officers if they felt even slightly threatened,” her voice had risen to a yell as she gestured to the surrounding police force. “The both of you have just _jeopardized_ the safety of everyone in the immediate area! Officers and civilians, alike. Do you even care about that at all?”

    “Sir,” Agent Faeley began, ready to defend their case. “We had reason to believe that the culprits would not follow through on their threat and that we could apprehend them--”

    “You had reason to believe?” the director asked sarcastically, now focusing most of her attack on the female agent. “Well, Agent, let me remind you how we operate in the field, since you’ve obviously forgotten. When there is _any_ situation that has even a chance of unnecessarily endangering lives beside your own, you _do not_ investigate. You _do not_ follow through on a gut feeling. You _do not_ disobey orders.”

    “Madame Director,” the chief interjected, cutting the AD’s reprimand short. “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to move a safe distance away from the scene. The area’s a two point eight danger zone. Chances of injury increasing to seventy--”

    “Actually, _sir_ , what are you doing here?” Bunnymund took the chance to switch to the offensive against his boss.

    “Well, with the obvious resistance towards the case from the both of you, I decided to tag you to make sure you both tried your best in the field,” came her response, voice strained from trying to moderate the volume of her fury. “I was going to alert you to this decision later today in private, that is until I was informed of your idiot charge of the castle.”

    “Ma’am,” the chief’s voice was insistent.

    “I’ll finish with the both of you later,” the director promised, pointing a threatening finger at the two agents, before stalking away.

    Agents Aster and Ana both let out a sigh of relief, both grateful for the pause in shouted abuse. They looked to the demolished entrance of the building, now being swarmed by police officers. The entirety of the front doors of the museum were gone. Rubble shook from the bordering walls had piled into the now empty door way. The whole place was in chaos, with cops in a panic, running every which way, and the surrounding audience of civilians creating an uproar. The two agents dwelled on, what they now realized, was their own stupidity of running into the already surrounded building and the subsequent trap inside.

   “So,” Agent Faeley pipped up, addressing her partner with a somewhat gloating voice as the two of them stared at the mess before them. “Still think they’re ‘just kids’?”


	4. A Plan and A Meeting

**Chapter 3: A Plan and A Meeting**  
  
    “Woohoo! Yeah!” Jack shouted as he swung himself over a railing, landing on a catwalk below. His collapsable steel staff, which had been tucked away in his pocket during the heist, was now extended to its full, six and a half feet, the familiar object gripped tightly in his hand. We swung his staff, sending snowflakes to flutter in the draft let in by the large, rusted holes in the walls. Rapunzel laughed and ran to the center of the expansive warehouse to spin on her toes amidst the indoor flurry, trying to catch a flake on her tongue. The Hope Diamond sparkled on its white diamond chain while it rested against her chest, glittering in the large, overhead light as she spun.

    Jack had found the rusted out warehouse a few weeks ago while scoping out the area. It was the perfect place to lay low after their heist, just far enough from the museum to avoid the immediate search area and just old enough and hidden in a collection of other gutted out apartment buildings and old shops to go unnoticed and un-searched. The dust and rubble from the explosion at the museum still clung to all of their clothes and hair as they came into the open space of the abandoned warehouse.

    “Oh, come on, you two. Cheer up!” Jack called out to Merida and Hiccup as they entered the warehouse, bickering like an old married couple. Jack swung down, using a few more railings and beams to land behind the pair. He came up from behind to walk between them, an arm draped over each set of shoulders. “We’ve got the jewel, and a buyer ready to take it. Isn’t that right Punz?” he called over to the still twirling princess. 

    “Yup!” She called back, never stopping in her dancing and spinning, weaving in and out between the flakes, turning the game into a ballet. “Fat, old guy in Rhode Island. Funny name like Herman, or something.”

    “Right, so like I said, we got out fine _with_ the jewel, and a buyer, so no worries! Would you two please stop fighting?”

    “Only if you tell Hiccup teh get better plans of the building next time,” Merida grumbled.

    “Oh, please, you probably just read them wrong,” Hiccup retorted.

    “You really think Aye’d do somethin’ like tha’?” she scoffed. “Yer off yer rocker.”

    “There’s no way those plans are wrong.”

    “They are, an’ you know it! It almost cost us the job!”

    “Well it didn’t. Anyways, we got out fine, so what are you complaining about?”

    “Are yeh callin meh a baibe, greetin’ at its mother’s tit?”

    “ _What?!_ I don’t even know what you’re saying!”

    Jack let out a sigh and stood back, watching the other two walk ahead as they continued to argue.    There wasn’t much he could do. They were either going to keep fighting until they wore themselves out, or one proved the other wrong, resulting in the loser pouting for a few days. It was the same thing every time, like clockwork.

    He shook his head and pulled himself up to sit on a low-hanging catwalk. He sent a few more flakes tumbling for Rapunzel to dance in. She really was beautiful, they way she spun and dipped and swayed, her eyes closed as she twirled in her own world.

    Jack settled on the catwalk to watch her as she turned a solo dance into a duet, dancing with the flakes as her partners, spinning between them, weaving in and out in intricate motions. Her hair trailed behind her, threads of gold silk stringing in between tuffs of cotton in the air. Jack thought if she danced fast enough, she’d be able to weave a tapestry from all that thread and cotton. An extensive piece of gold and white art work to hang on the wall that would spell out all of their lives. Their pain and love and suffering for laid out in a story for the world to see.

    Jack watched her with a kind of sadness from atop his perch. She really was a wonderful dancer. Her grace and beauty glided across his mind’s eye, entwining them selves amongst his thoughts and memories. Maybe in different life, with different circumstances, she could’ve done it professionally. Her rise to fame would’ve been as a prima ballerina, instead of one of the world’s most wanted criminals. 

    His mind started to wonder about where they’d all be if life had been different. Rapuzel would have grown up knowing her parents. Their fortune would’ve paid for all those lessons for her to become a princess ballerina, making it big on stage with fans and lights and roses and her family watching proudly form the audience. Jack wondered if she still had her innocence in that other world, instead of it being ripped away from her so young in this one. 

    Hiccup would still be grinding his way through school, aiming to be a physicist, doctor, or engineer, smashing his head against the wall every day, wondering what in the hell he was doing with his life. He’d hate his dad and the life he was forcing Hiccup into, trying to make himself into something he’s not. 

    Merida would be back in Scotland, with three brothers instead of two. Probably married by now and sulking about it, wishing for a different life, a life with excitement and adventure, for this life. 

    Jack would have known his family, his real one. Grown up with a younger sister, taken her to the arcade, or the movies, or to go ice-skating. Maybe they would be a close family, the kind you hardly ever see except for TV. There would be family movie nights and Jack graduating high school as the sports superstar and going to his father’s university on a full ride and they’d all be happy and loved and content. And everything would be perfect. 

    This life wouldn’t exist, with its heists and its dealers and its dangers. There’d be no jobs, no plans, just life, stretching on forever in front of them with no clue as to what lay at the end. Then again, if that life had really happened, Jack would’ve never met Merida, Hiccup, Rapunzel, or any of them. And that was an unbearable thought. To have a life without the rest of them. To have a life without Rapunzel...

    “I’ve stopped dancing, you know.”

    Jack was jerked out of his reverie and back to the real world. The world with police, guns, explosions, and heists. The world were they had just managed to steal one of the planet’s most precious diamonds. The world where he knew Rapunzel. The kind, caring Rapunzel that stood over him now with her large green eyes and golden silk hair.

    He looked around behind him, a bit confused, “What?”

    “I’ve stopped dancing,” she repeated, lowering herself to sit next to him, her curtain of long, blonde hair trailing behind her on the rusted metal of the catwalk. She stuck her legs through the bars supporting the safety rail to let them hang over the side. She swung her feet back and forth through the night air let in by the rusted out warehouse walls. “You were watching me dance, but I stopped,” she explained.

    “Okay....” was all Jack could say, still a little lost.

    He was taken aback as she suddenly leaned in close. Her face was serious, as if she was about reveal an important secret. She was so close he could feel the light tickle of her breath, see himself in the reflection of her large, green eyes. He tried to count all the little freckles dotting her nose and cheeks, but couldn’t. There were too many. “That means you can stop watching,” she whispered.

    Jack chuckled, relieved, braking their gaze as she leaned back with a small smile. That was her. That was his Rapunzel, always so playful and strait forward. Wait a minute... _his_ Rapunzel? No, no. That could never happen. Not when they were on a team like this. A relationship-- _God, how could he even think that?_ \-- would just make things...messy, to say the least. In this world anyways...

    “Ah, right,” he said to the beautiful, _not_ -his Rapunzel beside him. “No, Punzie, I was just... thinking about stuff.”

    “Oh, yeah?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “You seem to be doing that a lot today.”

    “Well, I’m the boss,” he replied jokingly. “It’s my job.” 

    She gave him a smile and a giggle. Her laugh lingered in his ears, a gentle tinkling of wind chimes caught in a spring breeze. It always like that. Her, a beautiful, blooming spring, filled with dancing and hope. And him, a chilly, blank white winter, scattered with fun school days and mischievous snowball fights. Two ends of the spectrum, always so close together.

    “Alright then, bossman,” she said, playfully nudging him with her shoulder. “So what’s next?”

    A knowing smile spread across his face. 

    “The next part of the plan.” He then hopped upright on the catwalk, hauling himself up by the safety bar. “Hey, you two!” he called to the still arguing Hiccup and Merida, who were yelling at each other across a rusted out section of machinery on the other side of the warehouse. “If you two would stop your bickering for a few seconds, I could tell you where we’re going next.”  
  


* * *

  
  
    “What the bloody hell are we supposed to do now? We’re up to our grundies in the shitter,” Agent Bunnymund complained, his frustration finally bursting to send an entire file of holo-papers exploding across the room.

    “Oh, come on, Bunny,” his partner consoled as she moved to calmly pick up the fallen papers. After all the excitement of the chase last night through the Baton Museum, a good night’s sleep had helped her revert back to her cheerful self. “It’s not that bad.”

    “Wha’? Not that bad?” He bent down to start picking up scattered file fragments with his partner, having cooled down after his initial outburst. “We just let four teenagers escape with the most priceless jewel on the planet, not to mention havin’ our asses handed to us by the Assistant Director in front of an entire squadron of cops.”

    “Oh, don’t forget that e-mail she sent,” Ana pipped up, keeping her tone light in the hopes it would cheer up her partner. “We still have to go met with her today,” she continued as Aster handed her the rest of the file.

    “Well that’s just perfect,” Bunny let out a sigh as he flopped down onto one of the beds supplied by the hotel they were staying in. “I don’t s’ppose I’d want to know when we’re meeting with her?”

    “Didn’t say,” came the response as the other agent filed the holo-papers back into their original order. “Just said that Nick would be around to pick us up.”

    “Ugh, that blowhard again. You’ve got to be kidding me.”

    Just then, there was a knock at the door. The two agents looked to each other before Tooth moved away from the organization of files to answer the door.

    “Bah! Tooth! A good morning to you!” Aster could hear the booming voice of his unit chief from all the way down the entrance hall. He let out a moan as a sense of foreboding washed over him.

    “Hello, Nick,” Aster heard his partner as he began to mentally prepare for a cheery, eight-in-the-morning greeting, accompanied by a bone crushing hug.

    “You doing vell after excitement of last night?” Nick asked Ana. Before she could answer, Aster came up from behind her in the entrance hallway, in the direct line of sight of his boss.

    “Ah! There he is! Mister Bunny Man!” Nick called out coming forward as Tooth moved out of the way. 

    “Hello, Nick. How--oof!” Aster’s lack-luster greeting was suddenly knocked from his lungs by a bear hug from his so-called superior. The strict, candy hard shield of the old man that had lead them into the Assistant Director’s office a week ago had dissipated, leaving nothing but this naturally jolly, marshmallow of an escort to great them. 

    Now, Unit Chief Nicholas St. North was a large man, even compared to Aster. Standing close to six foot, four, he was as wide was he was tall. He was practically a walking barn, the image made complete by the red shirts he always seemed to be wearing. So with all that mass and muscle, every hug was a question of whether or not you’d suffocate or live.

    Nick let out a huge cheerful laugh as he let Aster go, “I trust you too still doing vell?” 

    “You know what, Nick?” Aster cut the morning pleasantries short, his patience waring thin. “How ‘bout we cut the chit-chat? Tooth and I both know we’re in deep with Mandy and we know you’re here to bring us to her. So if we could...”

    “Ah, yes,” the unit chief said, his cheery attitude fading to something tinged with pity. “About that, I am very sorry, you know. Tough case, for anyone. I want to let you know, you made good choice, trying to catch bad guys beforehand. However, Mandy does not agree, what with bomb threat. I tried to convince her, tell her you guys did good, but she is stubborn as a horse, no?”

    Aster couldn’t agree more with that. He and Mandy were always bumping heads whenever he was on a case under her supervision, which was most of the time. She was always playing it by the rules when he was running a different path. The rules and regulations only held him back, restricting his field of investigation and area of operations. He knew the only way to catch a culprit was to catch him fast and hard, regulations be damned. 

    Aster softened as he looked at the big guy. He was only tying to help, after all. He gave Nick a pat on his enormous shoulder, “Yeah, well thanks for the support anyways, mate.”

    The large man gave a nod. He lead the reluctant agents out to the standard FBI hover car parked around the front of the hotel. They took a short, ten minute ride to the Los Angeles FBI satellite office. Though not quite as big as headquarters in Washington, the building was still rather imposing with it blank face and harsh, government standard layout. The agents looked at each other, sharing another one of their looks, both feeling a certain amount of dread in their stomachs.

    There was no way to avoid it, they were going into the lions’ den.      
  


* * *

  
  
    The Big Four’s current plan of action was to hole up in the abandoned warehouse for the night before leaving via unmarked hover car for a nonstop drive to Rhode Island. There, they’d drop off the jewel and get their payment from some fat guy with a funny name whose family was head of the Boeing corporation. 

    Boeing was still head of flight technology after hundreds of years, making bounds ahead of everyone else with the production of the first ever plasma passenger jet. The company decided to launch their own commercial airlines, _BoeingBoeing_ , in the 2160s, which soon grew to be the most booked airlines on the planet while all the others tried to play catch up to the SuperJet. So, needless to say, the family with the most Boeing shares at the time gained a remarkable fortune during the Big Boom, proving their spoilt grandson to be a nasty and greedy fella. A fella in the market of purchasing outlawed or illegal jewelry and jewels. Jewelry which he gave to the hoard of women he had cycling through his life, all of which he was convinced were in love with him, instead of his money.

    Moving onward, Jack explained that they were to hop on a passenger jet from Rhode Island to Chicago, Illinois, coming into the O’Hare-Donnallie International Airport. The ODIA was the busiest airport in the world, and the only one sanctioned for commercial inter-terrestrial flight within the US. With all those crowds and people from all over the world, its would be easy for them to blend in and not be noticed.

    Once they were in Chicago, they’d set up home base with Toothless.

    “Wait a sec,” Merida cut in. “Wha’ in the bloody hell’s name is a Toothless?”

    “Oh, come on Merida,” Rapuzel teased, “You know Toothless.”

    “Actually, she doesn’t,” Hiccup noted, “She’s never gone with us on any of our supply runs to meet him.”

    “Yeah, but we’ve talked about him though,” Jack commented with disbelief. “ _You’ve_ talked about him enough,” he said, gesturing towards Hiccup.

    “Yeah, but I doubt she was was listening. She hardly ever listens to anything.” 

    “Oi!” An indignant Merida protested. “Why don’ yeh watch yer trap before Aye--”

    “Alright,” Jack cut in, stopping them before another argument broke out. “If you two could _not_ fight, for like, fifteen minutes? That’d be great.” He took a second as he waited for the other two to back down before continuing.

    “Anyways, Merida, Toothless is an old friend of Hiccup’s. He’s where we get most of our black market stuff for Hiccup’s inventions and your...whatever it is you do--”

    “Oi!”

    “Kidding! But we’re moving home base there so it’ll be a bit closer to our next few targets. Toothless has already got a good place set up, so we figured we’d room with him. Plus, living with our supplier would make things a bit simpler.”

    “Wha’ aboot our old base?”

    “We’ve got everything from the old storehouse already there, in Chicago. Angus and the Night Fury have been there for about a week now.”

    “Don’t worry, Mer,” Hiccup chimed in, “both our babies are in good hands. Toothless was my mechanic before you.”

    “ _Our_ babies? Fer all the work Aye’ve put inteh tha’ pile of scrap metal, tha’ damn Night Fury of yers might as well be mine.”

    “Yeah, whatever,” Hiccup said dismissively. He was about to come up with a better retort, when a realization shot through his mind. “Hey, Princess,” he said, suddenly directing his attention towards Rapunzel. “You ok with packing up shop and moving to Chicago, of all places?”

    “Hmm? Oh, yeah,” she brushed off the question, as if one of the largest outposts for organized crime in the world were nothing more than a small town suburb. “Gothel still thinks I’m dead at the bottom of Lake Michigan. So we’re all good.” Her smile didn’t look like it held any room for doubt, but Hiccup knew better.

    “That’s not what I was talking about--”

    “She said she was fine with it,” Jack cut in. Apparently, it was a touchy subject. The entire atmosphere of the conversation suddenly changed as the winter boy gave Hiccup a hard look, threatening him to not push the subject further. Everyone could feel as the temperature dropped a few degrees. Hiccup in particular was taken aback by the outburst.

    “Alright...” There was something more there, something Hiccup wasn’t picking up. He couldn’t help but think it had something to do with Eugene, whom none of them had seen for a couple of months now. So he decided to set it aside for now and try to get something out of Jack later. 

    “Yeh see, wha’ _Aye_ wanteh know,” Merida pipped up, trying to change the topic before anything got too serious, “is how this bean pole of a knob could have any ‘old friends.’ Aye was under the impression he did nit have any friends before he met us.”

    Hiccup let out a laugh. “You see that’s the thing, Toothless is more than just a friend. He’s kind of like a pet cat.”

   _‘Pet cat’?_ That took Merida by surprise. “Wha--?”

    Her question was cut short by an uproarious burst of laughter from Jack.

    “Yeah, more like your lover!”

    “Oh, no. I believe _that_ prestigious title belongs to you!” Hiccup teased, giving the other boy a playful shove. 

    All tension that had been in the air a few moments ago had completely melted, like icicles in July. A chase soon broke out between Jack and Hiccup, whatever issues either of them might of had now stashed away. Laughter echoed in the old warehouse as the two of them bounded after each other through the beams and the catwalks, now and again pushing off the walls and the ceiling for leverage.

    Unbeknownst to the FBI and their wide range of intelligence, Jack was well versed in urban gymnastic practices similar to Hiccup. Though not schooled in quite the same style of parkour as Hiccup was, Jack knew how to swing his way around a warehouse or abandoned factory. He could be pretty agile. So long as he had something to grab onto, he could swing himself around, building up momentum to push him further and faster. He could control breezes and crosswinds with his staff, using them in the same way Hiccup used his anti-gravity shoes as a boost to fly.

    Somewhere in the midst of their friendly fighting and name calling, Jack went a little overboard, causing snow to pile in the corners of the warehouse and ice to freeze over a good number of the catwalks and most of the concrete floor.

    The girls couldn’t help but laugh as they watched Hiccup try to land back on solid ground, only slip on the ice and end up sliding straight into a snowdrift. 

    “So wha’s the big deal wit this Toothless guy, anyways?” Merida asked as the two of them watched Jack try to pull a helpless Hiccup out of the pile of snow he was now lodged in.

    “Jack’s known Toothless about as long as he’s known Hiccup. The other two had already known each other when Jack found them,” Rapuzel explained as Jack’s failed rescue attempts sent him spinning across the icy floor. “The three of them are pretty close, though Hiccup and Toothless are probably the closest. Hiccup found Toothless while he was still in school. They were practically inseparable from then on. 

    “That is, until Jack told Hiccup his plans for a team. Toothless didn’t like the idea of the heists or the robberies, but Hiccup was interested by the thought of adventure. So, he left school to join up with Jack until they found me, and then we found you. Hiccup’s always kept in touch with Toothless, though. Friends to the end,” she finished, distracted as she watched the two boys, now rolling around in the snow, each trying to make the other eat it. Friendship like that was something special, something to keep you going, to keep you warm inside, Rapunzel thought as she watched the boys, thinking about Hiccup and Toothless. She was glad Hiccup had found a friendship like that.

    “So wha aboot the whole cat thing then?” Merida asked. “What is it tha’ set them off like tha’?”

    Rapunzel’s eyebrows came in to touch as she thought about the question.

    “You know, I’m not really sure. I think it’s just an inside joke. I guess... the thought of Toothless being anything other than what he is, like a cat, is funny to them. Who really knows? They’re boys. Nothing they do ever makes much sense.”

    “Yeah, tha’s troo enough,” Merida agreed as a snowball fight broke out below their catwalk. Then, something Rapunzel had said caught her attention. “Wait a minute. ‘Anything other than wha’ he is.’ Are yeh sayin’ he’s not human?”

    “Now, I never said that,” Rapunzel replied, a mischievous smile playing on her lips. Before Merida could ask another question, Rapunzel swung herself over the railing and into the snowball fight with a shout back to her friend. “Come on! Let’s have some fun!”

    After about about an hour of snow ball fights (boys against girls), sneakered iceskating, and another out break of arguments, the group finally managed to calm down enough to get some sleep. They huddled on catwalks and under machines, with only ratty blankets or towels for warmth. This was something they were used to, squatting in abandoned apartment buildings or warehouses while on the job or right after a heist to stay low. There was one particular heist, a few months back, that had them stuck in an old barn on the edge of some town for an entire week. Merida and Hiccup were just about ready to kill each other, with Jack having reached his wits end and Rapunzel struggling to keep the peace. 

    That was pretty much their group in a nutshell. Well, maybe to an outside eye. They were actually a very well oiled machine, everyone working and fitting together perfectly with their personalities harmonizing between each other. A collection of the greatest minds, brought together to become the greatest band of thieves the world has ever seen.

    A closer group of friends could not be found. Because that’s what they were, more than a team, more than a collection of bandits and thieves. That’s what made them such a great team. They were the best kind of friends, with bonds between them that could withstand time and secrets shared amongst them that could’ve toppled governments. They were more than a band of misfits thrown together by unfortunate circumstances and a single goal of robbing. They were a family. They might not have known it at the time. They might’ve been without blood or marriage. But that’s what they were, without a doubt. They were a family of broken hearts and lives that had found each other, each doing their best to glue the others back together. They were a family of bravery and kindness and intelligence and sarcasm and sass and fun. They were more than what the world saw them as.  
  


* * *

  
  
    The Assistant Director looked up from the reports she had been reading as the the two agents entered the room.  
 

   The unit chief had taken them to the FBI’s satellite office in L.A. Apparently, that was where their boss had set up shop. Any situation in which there was a satellite hosting a high ranking official of the FBI, meant that all authority automatically differed to said official. With Mandy being one of the eight total Assistant Directors in the FBI, her arrival to the L.A. satellite office was one of one of these occurrences. Upon her arrival, she was supplied with her own temporary office and desk. It was this office that the two agents were lead to for a conference with the AD.  
 

   “Nick,” she addressed the unit chief first. “Thank you for bringing them here. I am afraid I’m going to have to ask you to wait outside this time.”  
 

   The unit chief looked like he could get out of the room fast enough. After he had left, the agents glanced towards each other. They were in for it now.  
 

   “Agents,” Mandy now addressed them cooly. “Please have a seat.” She was referring to the two wooden chairs in front of her desk. The two obeyed, hesitantly settling in the chairs, preparing for the worst to come. The assistant director took a breath before she started in on them.  
 

   “Now, could someone please tell me what the hell happened last night concerning what was supposed to be an already controlled situation.” Her tone was surprisingly calm. Aster thought of the eye of a storm. Deceptively calm until the rest of the storm crashed over you, destroying your crops and home, ripping up your life. He knew the director was only withholding the storm brewing behind her eyes that was meant for them.  
 

   “Mandy,” Bunny began, “what you--”  
 

   “Agent,” she cut in harshly.  
 

   “Sorry, _sir_. But what I was saying, is what you don’t understand, is that the situation wasn’t under control. Yes, they had the area surrounded, but they weren’t making any moves to catch the bloody bushrangers--”  
 

   “English, Agent Bunnymund.”  
 

   “Sorry. They weren’t making any moves to catch the _fugitives_. They were sitting around on their hands, waiting for the criminals to escape.”  
 

   “It is my understanding, Agent, that they had received a bomb threat earlier that day, which required them to stay outside the building during the duration of the heist. So, in my opinion, those police officers were, in fact, doing all they could do at that moment in time.”  
 

   “Ma’am,” Ana started to defend their case. “We had adequate reason to believe that the fugitives were not intending to follow through on their threat.”  
 

   “On what grounds?”  
 

   “Um, well,” Ana looked towards her partner. They didn’t exactly have any real evidence to support their case. The director let out a sigh as she rubbed her eyes behind her glasses, obviously tired of having to deal with the situation.      
 

   “So let me get this straight. Am I to believe that you two went into that building, with full understanding that you could be endangering lives, on a ‘gut feeling’? Please tell me that is not the case.”  
 

   “Well, ma’am, we don’t really have any better way to put it,” Ana offered meekly.  
 

   She looked at them for moment. To Aster, it looked as if she was contemplating whether or not they deserved to be fed to a python.  
 

   “Okay,” she broke the silence. “One more question. How did you two know about that passageway into the museum?”  
 

   Ana was taken aback by the question. Aster could see as his partner became nervous, flustered with not knowing how to approach the question.  
 

   “Agent Faeley used to live in L.A.” Aster announced, thinking fast, before the director noticed Ana’s uncertainty. “She’s told me about how she and her friends would explore back alleys like that one. When we were on at the scene she said she’d remembered finding the entrance when she was younger.”  
 

   Mandy looked over Agent Faeley, “Is that true, Agent?”  
 

   “Yes, ma’am.”  
 

   “Interesting.” The director took off her glasses and leaned forward on her desk. Her tone turned steely as she continued, “You see, Faeley, I distinctly remember you telling me that you lived in the upper region of Massachusetts for your entire life until you moved down here to join the FBI. So I’m left to wonder, how on Earth could you be living in two places at once?”  
 

   Ana was the one to beat her partner with quick thinking this time. “My family had been living in California for a few weeks when I was younger. We had moved their to take care of my dying grandma. That summer, a couple of neighborhood kids showed the closed off entrance to me one day. It was their secret hideout. Two weeks later, my grandmother died, there was a small funeral, and then we moved back Massachusetts. We weren’t in the state long. Mother didn’t like the dry weather and all the ‘damn hipsters’, as she called them.”  
 

   The director contemplated the two agents for another moment, looking them up and down. Ana prayed she believed their story; there was no telling what Mandy would  do if she found out they were lying about finding the entrance. She could feel herself tense up, waiting to see if the director believed them or not. After an agonizing minute of waiting, the director slid her glasses back into place.  
 

   “Alright. An acceptable explanation.”  
 

   Ana let out a breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see her partner physically relax. So, he’d been worried, too. All that bravado stood up well to murderers and thugs, but seemed strong as tissue on the presence of the director. Understandable, really. She intimidated everyone.

  
    “So,” Mandy continued. “It appears to me that the only thing left to do is to deduct a point from each of your badges.”

    “What?!” Aster exclaimed, leaping to his feet. “Mandy, that’s not fair. I mean, we looked at the police reports and they even said, the kids were no real threat. They only just had enough explosives to knock the front doors out! They found nothing that was even close to taking out a city block. In the end, Ana and I were right! I mean, that’s got to count for something.” He finished with a entreating look at his boss, who was still sitting calmly, looking back at him with that cool, unrelenting stare. She slowly stood to meet the agent’s gaze. Though she was a good number of inches shorter than him, she had the essence of looking down on him as she continued. 

    “Do not think I do not have access to that information, Agent,” she said, her voice cold and unyielding. “I am well aware of the situations concerning the events of last night. But keep in mind, Agents, hindsight is always 20/20. Though the criminals did in fact lack the ability to carry out their threat, you had every reason to believe that at the time they would, resulting in many deaths and many casualties. Therefore, your behavior concerning last night has been deemed unacceptable, based on the _supportable_ information you had access to at the time. _A point, each._ ”

    “Director, please,” Ana suddenly cut in, standing to join the other two, the plea obvious in her face. “None of it was Bunny’s fault. All of it was mine. It was my idea, my plan, and I dragged him into it. Please, take it out on me, not him.”

    The assistant director turned to contemplate the female agent. 

    “Is that true, Agent Bunnymund?” she asked without taking her eyes of the desperate Ana. 

    “Uh-Sir I’m not--”

    “Of course it is,” Ana cut off his flustered response. “This big oaf would lie through his teeth to protect me. Ma’am, I haven’t lied to the bureau once in all my life. As if I’d risk my skin for this yellow bastard--”

    “Hey!”

    “So please, director, I’m just trying to do what’s right. The idea was all mine. Agent Aster wouldn’t have gone in if it wasn’t for me.”

    The director was still contemplating the female agent in front of her. Searching her, looking for any cracks, weaknesses, or doubt. 

    “You’re lucky to have such a loyal partner, Agent Bunnymund,” she addressed to him, again without taking her eyes off Ana. “Fine. Then it looks like I have no choice than to take two points from your badge, Agent Faeley. That should leave you with five, so I suggest you watch your step from now on. However you,” she turned, finally, to face the male agent, “only have one point left, Agent. I’ll say it again, you’re lucky to have the partner you do. Watch it. Next time, it’ll be your badge.”

    The look she gave him could’ve frozen hell itself.  
  


* * *

  
  
    “I’M RADIOACTIVE! RADIOACTIVE!”

    The radio of the hover car was blaring as four of the world’s greatest bandits screamed along with it out of tune, their car roaring down the open interstate and out of the cluttered city of Phoenix, Arizona. The top of the hover car was down, the wind whipping their hair around as the sun blazed overhead. All of them sung at the top of their lungs to the radio, no filter, nothing held back.

    It was an ancient song that was playing, from years and years ago, dragged up recently by the current hit band, Critical Circuit. The song was cut down to its core and built up, modernized, for their newly released ‘classics’ album. It was the kind of song that shot to the top of the charts and stayed there, being played over and over again on the radio until you think you’d be sick of it. But that’s the thing, it was the kind of song you could never get tired of. The kind of song that filled you from the inside, only to burst out of your mouth as you spent a gloriously beautiful day charging down the interstate with your best friends, not a care in the world. 

    The group had had a late start the morning after the heist, sneaking out of the abandoned warehouse as the sun, already hung high in the sky, urged them on. They found their unmarked method of transport down a side street, hidden under a ratty tarp. They had bought the car from a small town dealership a few weeks back.  

    Over the years, license plates had become obsolete, leaving the identifying of personal vehicles to technology. Before the development of hover cars, or even self-steering technology, every car produced after the early 2100s was required to have installed in it multiple devices that sent out constant electronic signals, each car containing a unique code to identify it, into the air around the vehicle, waiting to be picked up by receiving software. Said receiving software was held by police officials and installed in most stoplights, used to identify cars involved traffic violations, high speed chases, suspected involvement in crimes, etc. In order to make it an un-marked and untraceable vehicle, it took a very skilled technician to remove a car’s identifying signals, which they just so happened to have.

    After Hiccup had removed any and all identification signals sent out by the hover car’s inner components, thus making it an unmarked hover car, a few weeks before hand, all that was left was to start up the car. The group pilled in and set out on the open road ahead. After a pit stop for breakfast on the go, they pulled into the parking lot of a super-mall. There, they exchanged their clothes for less conspicuous attire.

    Hiccup had traded in his leather ensemble for something that suited him better. He was now wearing jeans, the pants lose enough for the easy movement necessary for lifting. His favorite pair of airo-sneakers were strapped on comfortably to his feet, ready for action. A loose t-shirt only revealed hints of a his larger tattoo, curling around his neck while smaller, separate ones continued down his arms. The dragon tattoo was the only one that actually moved, literally curling and wrapping itself around his neck and chest.

     The technology of moving and color-changing ink had been deemed safe and approved for commercial use somewhere in the 2190s. It had been incredibly popular ever since it was put on the market, though the art of stationary tattoos never quite went extinct. If he’d ever been asked about his motionless tats, which were rather outdated and out of style for the time, Hiccup’s answer would’ve been that he simply liked them and their retro feel. The shirt fit him loosely, causing most of his lithe muscle definition, gained by practicing parkour, to be shrouded except for his muscular arms. 

    The tattoos, accompanied by the lip ring, the small handful of earrings and cuffs glinting in his ears, the slouchy grey beanie, and the shaggy, ruffled hair with a small braid or two in it would give any passerby the impression that Hiccup was just another unruly teenager. 

    But his friends knew better. The rest of the group knew how truly geeky he was, what with his raving about circuits and wires and anything electronic. He’d go off on tangents about all the different inventions he’d be working on, the rest of the group completely lost on the complexities and eight-syllable technical terms. Though you’d never guess it by his attire, Hiccup truly was a genius, capable of rivaling Einstein and Hawking. He’d hole himself up in his room for days on end, working on projects, equations, and new inventions, only occasionally leaving to stretch his legs and eat. 

    His skill, his technology, and even his sharp wit were all things ignored by his father, teachers, and everyone from home. They were focussed on the grades, the tests, the scores, the university applications, and how it would all reflect on him, and in turn, them. For a while, he was concerned with all those things, too. His whole life revolving around school and his classes, weather he found interest in them or not. But then he met Toothless, the single person that had changed his life forever. 

    Merida had swapped her dark clothes for a pair of baggy, kaki cargo pants that seemed to be mostly made of pockets. They were held tightly around her hips with a military grade belt and their cuffs tucked into tiny leather shoes. She’d found a close-fitted tee with some random design that changed every few seconds on the front. After leaving the store, she’d taken out her pocket knife to cut off all the hems and cuffs, effectively turning it into something just short of a crop top that showed off a smooth stomach whenever she reached upwards. Her assortment of leather cuffs and bracelets had reappeared to encircle her wrists and forearms with a silver medallion, complete with intricate bear carving, dangling from around her neck. Her forest of ginger curls had been corralled into a pony tail for the windy car ride, revealing countless steel earrings ridging the cartilage of both her ears and matched the one in the side of her nose. 

    It was the look she normally wore while working on her projects. Though not quite as obsessive as Hiccup, she did tend to become distracted whenever something caught her attention, often toiling for hours on end in her workshop. Obviously not skilled in the same area of electricity and wires as Hiccup, she did prove her own genius in the world of mechanics. Having been taught mostly by her father in more than explosives, she could fix just about anything that didn’t completely depend on electricity. The inner workings, churning cogs, and wheels of just about any devise would often have her mesmerized, or you know, throwing wrenches and tables across the room whenever something proved difficult. 

    The only time she was ever truly calm and concentrated was at the shooting range, firing off round after round from a traditional rifle. She only practiced with guns because they proved useful. Her true heart lay with the bow and arrow, her usually loud mouth and mind quieting as all energy turned towards the target in front of her. Her attention on that little red dot and the single, graceful movement of the arrow, strong and assertive; nothing like the erratic and jerking body of a gun. She would have never told anyone this, and it’s doubtful she was even fully aware of it herself, but the grace of the medieval stringed weapon reminded her of her mother in some way. A women she hadn’t tossed a thought to in over three years.

    Jack would’ve preferred to simply trade in his black hoodie for a brighter one, but with the mild heat of the late July weather, something told him that wasn’t a good idea. So instead, he settled for not-quite-close-fitting straight jeans that rested snugly at his hips, a blue t-shirt with a leather vest, and a matching pair of oxfords. His pants pockets were deep enough for him to keep his collapsable steel staff in, which only reached a few inches long when fully collapsed. While the group was on their way out of the mall after their little shopping spree, they came across an antique store that Rapunzel dragged them all into. There, Jack had found a worn, brown hat. He wasn’t sure what it was about the hat, only that it caught his eye more than anything else in the store. The woman at the register called it a news-boy hat. Jack had absolutely no clue what a ‘news-boy’ was, only that he liked the hat and the surprising way it set off his white hair and snake-bite piercings. Granted, it wasn’t a hoodie, but it was the best he could do for the weather. 

    Jack was very fond of his hoodies. His hats and sunglasses, too. Anything that could hide his face, making it easy to become invisible. For years, that had been his only goal, to disappear, to not exist. And for a while, he had succeeded, bouncing around from city to city and squatting in various gutted buildings, much like the one they’d holed up in last night. He’d managed to avoid the foster system for a while before he was finally found, wandering around somewhere in Baltimore. It didn’t take long for him to be shipped off to San Francisco, where he was to find a shining new family waiting for him. Please. He was back on the streets in about four years. 

    The streets is actually where he’d found Hiccup and Toothless, completely by accident. The three hit it off surprisingly easy, spending hours hanging out and goofing around before Toothless had to leave to report to his boss and Hiccup had to go back to his classes. When they did have time together, they’d usually end up in the middle of some mess, the results of following along with one of Jack’s brilliant ideas. Jack had always had a head for mischief, adventure, fun, anything that could make him feel real. So, he’d be the one every time to come up with some crazy plan or idea that he’d drag the other two into, always getting them out just in time before they were caught and got in trouble. Somehow, he’d always ended up the one in charge, the one plunging along ahead because he was the one that had a brain for plans and schemes. He guessed that that was how he ended up in charge of this gang, leading them into battle and heists, all the while following his plan. He also guessed that if it wasn’t for that family deal in California, none of this would’ve happened.

    Rapunzel came spinning out of the changing rooms in a loose, cream blouse with a high enough collar to hide the priceless diamond still dangling around her neck for safe keeping. The shirt was accompanied by a flowing black skirt that just touched her knees. The material of the skirt was threaded with some compound that gave it a sheen that mad the black into undulate between an oil-like rainbow of colors on its own. Beneath the skirt, she had on a decorative lacework of black tights and worn, black boots. Her hair was pulled back into a plait that tickled her lower back. Whenever she swayed or moved, the braid moved enough to give glimpses of a black, sun tattoo on the back of her neck. 

    The sun is what kept her going. That blazing sun overhead, a reminder every day that with each step she took, it was one step closer to her real family. The sun was the the symbol for her family and their company. Very appropriate, considering how their chemical was practically responsible for lighting the whole world. The lights she saw everywhere, lit by her parents’ company and the sun shinning bright as the company symbol were constant inspirations and reminders that at the end of this crazy goose chase she was on with the three best people in the world, she would finally be able to go home to her family. She’d always wanted that, a home with a family. She hadn’t been able to go back to her’s sooner because Jack and Eugene had found her first. They’d helped her escape from Gothel, allowing her to explore the outside world. 

    After her grand escape, Rapunzel quickly learned how to hide herself. Though Gothel presumed her dead, there was always the chance she’d be recognized on the street by a number of people, thus dragging her back to that bitch of a woman. She had to make sure she remained unnoticed, but at the same time leave her free to enjoy the world. So, instead of melting and disappearing into the shadows like Jack, she decided to change herself. She’d managed to learn a large range of techniques and skills to transform her face and her identity, rendering her invisible to Gothel’s eye. It was with these techniques, as well as a good number of skills of an indecent manner that she had acquired unwillingly, that she was able to develop her unique method of gathering intel, and thus become an invaluable asset to the group. Though she took every day now at its best worth, enjoying life to it fullest with her friends at her sides, at the end of each sunset, it was just another step closer to being back together with her family and a normal life. 

    Once they’d chosen their new costumes, the crew pilled back into the car for their cross-country trip. They passed the endless hours with songs, road games, jokes, and stories interrupted by chinese fire drills at every opportune light that had them scrambling around outside the car in a game of musical car seats. With the late start and couple hours spent in the mall on goofing around and a lunch break, they’d only managed to make it as far as Phoenix, Arizona by dinner time. Chancing being caught as an unmarked car in such a large city, the team of four sat down to a good, middle-class dinner that wasn’t from some fast food joint or stashed from a random convenience store. The then got back in the car and on their way across the states, the summer sun lighting their way.

    After a few more hours of driving, the sun had set and the top of the hover car had gone back up to block out the chill of the night air. Jack looked in the rearview mirror at Merida and Hiccup in the back, their heads resting on each other’s shoulders as they slept soundly. He couldn’t help but chuckle. It was like those two were made for each other. Rapunzel was snoozing, curled up in the passenger seat.

    The radio was turned low, cranking out a soothing glass-pop song. Glass-pop was a genre of music combining the electronic beat of traditional pop songs with the wilting melodies of classical music and instruments, the result being a rather pleasant, modern-day lullaby. 

    The plan was to continue driving all night, Jack being the unspoken volunteer to stay up and watch the road.

    He looked at the steel road ahead of him, cutting through the New Mexican desert. The endless expanse of featureless black sand met with the midnight blue of a sky scattered with twinkling stars, the horizon fracturing the scenery, separating the two. The car was crazy silent, the radio barely above a whisper, as the small space filled with slow breathing. Jack just stared at the endless road in front of him.

    The road wound its was through the desert, stretching on and on, disappearing into the horizon and continuing on into space, looping around the moon before coming back to Earth. It twisted its way through the desert, reaching cities and towns and neighborhoods and farmland. It was a living thing, a metal snake slithering through crowds and buildings. It twisted an writhed with life. People swarmed over it, like tiny, scattered ants. Everyone trying to get somewhere, moving from place to place. Lives crowding and pushing, everyone believing that their destination was more important than the person beside them. They surged and cluttered inside the snake, filling it with life and energy as it carved its way through their world.

    Jack couldn’t help but chuckle at the whole scene. So many people, so many lives. They were just running around, with no reason, purpose, or understanding. It was pathetic. But he understood. He had a purpose, a reason for being. He had the plan, his plan. He had to see it through to the end, make sure they finished it. That was his reason. That, and maybe, just maybe, Rapunzel could be his reason, too. Now, that was something worth living for.

    He continued to watch the road-snake as it twisted and turned throughout the world, just continuing on and never ending. It reminded him of Rapunzel when she danced, so graceful, so gentle and fluid. Beautiful. He watched as it turned in of itself, wriggling in a dance Jack didn’t understand. It folded in over and over, getting smaller and smaller, until it finally consumed itself, leaving nothing but the night sky to stretch on forever in its place. 

    Jack was floating, drifting through the night sky as it wrapped itself around him. A cool, soft midnight blanket cocooning him. Stars exploded right in front of his eyes, a shower of cosmos and supernovas. They filled the sky with their light, illuminating his face. It was a magnificent spectacle. As they burst, glitter and magic rained down surrounding him with gold and silver as light clung to his night sky blanket.

    And suddenly, they stopped. One by one the stars sputtered and faded into the dark night sky, taking their light with them. Jack was left to drift aimlessly in the immense expanse of the night sky, now black as pitch. Even the moon was absent, having run away to leave him alone in the dark. He didn’t like the dark, it made him uncomfortable. He couldn’t exactly say why. Jack tried to unwrap the blanket that surrounded him. He had to get out. Had to find a way back to Earth. 

    He struggled with the midnight blanket as he spun further and further into the endless black. The once safe blanket soon turned into a prison as it tangled itself around his arms, legs and throat. He couldn’t escape, couldn’t untangle himself. Panic started to settle in his chest as he struggled to breath. The darkness pulled him deeper and deeper, an inky blackness surrounding him, threatening to make him a part of it. He couldn’t see, couldn’t breath. He didn’t know what to do as he was being sucked into the endless black. 

    A rumbling suddenly started. It thundered around him, impossibly loud, as it assaulted his ears. He cried out. The sound penetrated him to his core, the rumbling resonating in his bones, up his spine, in his skull. The resounding sound suddenly morphed, becoming clearer, like when you take cotton out of your ears after awhile and you can actually hear the world louder than it actually is, its sounds sharp and clear. The rumbling had transformed into laughter. A cold, harsh, unrelenting laugh that struck him even further, to the pit of his soul. He knew that laugh. Knew who it was from and what it meant. He had never wanted to hear that sound again. It surrounded him, all consuming, as it dragged him even further into the black.

    “Come, now, Jack. Don’t fight the darkness. You were meant for it.”

    Jack bolted upright in the driver’s seat, ejected from his dream as suddenly as if he had been doused in water. His heart was racing, threatening to burst form his ribcage. A cold sweat sheeted his face. His eyes were wide with fear as he struggled to breath, taking in quick, panicked wheezes. In a confused hysteria, he spun around in his seat, gaining his bearings and realizing he was back in the car. No steel snake or stars or blanket or laughter. It was just a dream. Just a dream. 

     _More like nightmare_ , he thought, finally relaxing as he leaned against his seat back. He tilted his head against the head rest and let out a sigh of relief, the dream already fading. It’s memory breaking up in his mind and floating away, like wisps of smoke, carried away by the wind. The dream was gone, a footprint washed away on the beach. He couldn’t even remember what it had been about. 

     He felt as the hover car started up and begin to move forward. Though most cars of the time were installed with an auto-pilot, leaving them to dependently and safely steer themselves, there was always the chance that a sensor would malfunction or an unpredictable event would catch the car off-guard, effectively confusing it and causing an accident. Thus, a safety-guard was put in place. Federal law stated that in order for any self-steering vehicle to run, there must be at least one passenger awake and aware at all times to focus on the road, ready to switch the steering to manual and take appropriate action if anything unexpected were to occur. Being installed with the technology to check heart rate, breathing, and even brain activity, a hover car could tell which of its passengers were awake, and which were sleeping. If no passengers proved awake while the vehicle was in motion, the car would immediately pull over to the side of the road and turn itself off, just as it had done when Jack had dozed off. After his rude awakening, though, the car had automatically started itself and was now back on route. All thoughts of a dream faded from Jack’s mind as the hover car began to pick up speed.

    But the dream had opened a floodgate. It had jarred loose the door hidden in the back little corner of his mind, where all the bad things were locked away. It began slowly, like the drops of rain before a storm, pinpricks on his brain. A flash of a scene, gone in an instant. A whisper, rising to the surface of his conscious, only to disappear the next second. Then the door swung open wide on its hinges, releasing a tirade of memories. Though the dream was forgotten, the memories that assaulted him were vivid and painfully clear, attacking him relentlessly from all sides. Memories of things he’d thought he’d forgotten. They flashed before his eyes, almost too fast to decipher one from another. 

    Him, crying alone in a cold, empty room. Flash forward. He was shivering, spasms racking his body as he bled out on the ground of an empty alley. Flash back. His hands were lashed down in front of him, his bare skin exposed as he cried out with each lash that landed on his back. Flash back further. He was screaming, being dragged from under a bridge by his hair as he struggled to escape. Flash forward. He stood there, alone and naked, body bruised and bleeding, waiting for the worst to come. He remembered pain. He remembered darkness. But most of all, he remembered that cold, harsh laughter, always there, resonating through his brain.

    Jack squeezed his eyes shut and covered his ears, as if that could block out the memories. But the black space behind his eyelids only served as a perfect movie screen for the memories to play out on. He leaned forward, resting his head on the dash, gasping for breath as he tried to eliminate the images running through his mind. But they only kept coming faster and faster. He couldn’t stop them. 

    Cold, clammy hands around his neck, squeezing the life from him as bone chilling laughter came from somewhere he couldn’t see. A boy, small and crying, standing in front of him, begging, pleading. Him, drenched and freezing as water came at him from everywhere, his nose, eyes, mouth, and lungs filling with liquid; he couldn’t breath; he was drowning. The boy again, now on his knees, a barrel pointed at his head. Jack, in a black room, as a voice whispered terrible things in his ear. The boy, the barrel, the cold metal in Jack’s hand. Wait, was he holding the gun? He couldn’t remember. Him again, in shackles that chaffed his already bleeding wrists and ankles as he begged for death. The boy, crying and alone. A trigger. A finger. Who’s finger? He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember. The boy was crying. Why couldn’t he remember? The boy was screaming. A barrel. A gun. _Who was holding the damn gun?_ A trigger. A finger. Bang! Blood splattering everywhere. He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember. 

    Jack pulled himself back to reality, clawing his way up through the grime and sewage as his own mind tried to pull him back down. He’d managed force enough of himself into real world that he could fumble in his pocket. Trembling fingers pushed his staff aside, grasping a small, plastic container. 

    Three pills. Count them. One. Two. Three. Three pills that could save him. He swallowed them quickly, holding his breath, suspended in mental agony as he waited for them to kick in. And then, nothing. Blissful nothing filled his head as the memories were shoved back into their corner, the door finally swinging closed. Lock them away and swallow the key.

    His breathing and heartbeat slowed, his mind emptying as he looked at the steel road ahead of him, cutting through the New Mexican desert. The endless expanse of featureless black sand met with the midnight blue of a sky scattered with twinkling stars, the horizon fracturing the scenery, separating the two. The car was crazy silent, the radio barely above a whisper, as the small area filled with slow breathing. Jack just stared at the endless road in front of him.

    He looked in the rearview mirror at Merida and Hiccup in the back, their heads resting on each other’s shoulders as they slept soundly. He couldn’t help but chuckle. It was like those two were made for each other. Rapunzel was snoozing, curled up in the passenger seat. He heard a murmur, small and muffled. He turned to find Rapunzel stirring in the seat next to him. Her eyes slowly opened as she pushed away sleepiness. She gave a yawn before sitting up in her seat, unfurling her legs to stretch. 

    “Well good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” Jack whispered cheerfully as she stared out the front window, gaining her surroundings with heavy eye lids. 

    “Hey, Ja-ahhhhhh-ck,” she said, her greeting caught in the middle by another yawn. “How are you holding up?”

    “Pretty good,” he replied. “Nothing to see, really, except the sand and the stars. Not too exciting, but I’m still awake.”

    Jack suddenly had a funny feeling, a tickling notion in his brain. He felt like he was worrying about something earlier, something big. Something he couldn’t remember... He shook himself of the feeling. If he couldn’t remember, it was probably for a good reason. 

    “If you want, I can stay up, watch the road,” Rapunzel offered, her eyes clearing as the tiredness began to fade away. “You should get some sleep.” 

    “Nah, I’m fine,” he shrugged off the offer. Something told him sleeping wasn’t a good idea. He couldn’t help the feeling that it wasn’t happy, cheery dreams that he’d find in his unconscious tonight. “Wouldn’t mind some company, though,” he added with a smile.

    She gave a small, still-sleepy nod. “Alright, then.”

    They stayed awake together, staring at the road ahead that never seemed to end. They changed the radio to play something less likely to put them to sleep, a station playing much more popular, modern music with a heavy beat. They had a few muttered conversations that didn’t last longer than a few sentences, neither of them with enough energy to keep a topic going. They kept their voices low so as not to disturb the sleeping figures in the back. Once or twice throughout the night, after they had left the dry expanse of desert, they stopped at a convenience store to relieve themselves and buy caffeine-infused provisions. 

    It was somewhere around four in the morning when Rapunzel asked, “Jack, what‘s going to happen now?”

    He glanced at her, confused. “What do you mean, Punz? We follow the plan, like we’ve always done.”

    “That’s not what I mean. We’ve got the FBI after us now. Jack, there were not supposed to be other people in that building. This changes everything.”

     “Ah,” he scoffed, realizing that what she was worrying about was no big deal. “Come on, Punzie, we’ve always had the feds on our tails and we’ve done just fine. This changes nothing.”

    “Yeah, but they’ve never made it this close before. Those agents went into the Baton looking for us, _after_ we’d already sent that note.”

    Jack let out a sigh, looking over at a concerned Rapunzel. She was right, most agents and cops would have stayed out of the museum, the bomb threat enough to scare them away. But these ones were different. Those FBI agents had called their bluff, charging in, guns blazing. Jack realized these agents were a new, unexpected variable. They weren’t going to be as easy as the other idiots that had been tracking them. He reached over to hold Rapunzel’s hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

    “Well, that’s as close as they’re ever gonna get. We’ll always be one step ahead, remember?”

    A thought suddenly occurred to him.

    “Speaking of which,” he started, distracted by the realization. “How’d they know about that passageway, anyways? There was no other way for them to get in the museum except for that basement entrance, but no one knew about it but us. None of the schematics or plans of the building we found even had it marked.” He looked at her, trying to think through how the FBI could have possibly known about the secret entrance. Rapunzel could only give a shrug in response. The subject was a mystery. These agents were already starting to proving themselves more than expected. Jack knew he’d have to watch his step with them.  
  


* * *

  
  
    “Bunny! Watch your step!” Ana cried. Too late. The agents collided, sending paper work, files, and boxes of chinese food everywhere. Luckily, none of the take-out boxes spilled any of their contents. Agent Aster stood up and lent a hand to his partner.

    “Alright, for the record, that was _not_ my fault.”

    “Right,” Tooth teased. “Well, I beg to differ.”

    The two set about to picking up their mess of scattered items. The hotel room door was still open from when Aster had backed into the room and sent his partner sprawling. He moved to close the door, jabbing the “Do Not Disturb” button to activate the projected hologram. The two were holed up in the hotel room for the night, planning on researching and studying the case files, trying to work through what their next move on the case would be, accompanied by some terrible Chinese take-out from a small restaurant up the road. 

    The meeting they had had with the assistant director earlier that day, though terrifying at first, proved helpful in putting them on the right track.  
  
...  
  
    “So, what do you two plan to do now?” Mandalyn Moony asked, as she sank back into her chair, the leather folding around her as she let herself relax. She was done with doling out punishments and acting all hard-ass boss-like, the excitement of the night before, and resulting night-long investigation that she had to be personally involved in had worn her out and she wasn’t in the mood for keeping up her act, especially not in front of her favorite agents.

    “Ma’am?” Tooth asked, confused, as she lowered her self back into her chair. With a glance from his partner, Aster followed suit.

    “The case, Agent,” the director said, slightly impatient. “What are you two planning on doing next, concerning the case?”

    “Well,” Ana began. “Agent Bunnymund and I decided last night that our best plan of action was going to be to search the area. You know, investigate the Baton Museum, interview the guards, see what we can get from--”

    She was cut off as thick file landed on the desk in front of her.

    “Already done,” the director said. “Waste of time for you two to go in and do that, the report’s right here.” She leaned forward on her desk and removed her glasses. Her gaze was softer than usual, and had surprising air understanding.

    Aster couldn’t help but think she looked...vulnerable. Well, as vulnerable as someone of her demeanor could look. Without her glasses and her face so open, Aster could notice small things. Little, overlooked aspects that are so important, but ignored so often. The faint splash of freckles across her nose, powdered over by porcelain make-up. The faint, white scar above her right eye, so thin, it was easy to miss.

    “Look, I know you two have never investigated a high profile case like this before, so you’re a little out of your depth here. You two are the best at what you do in the field; that’s why you were chosen for this case. But your experience in this type of investigation is... limited, if not all together non-existent. So, I’ll tell you the truth: I’m here not only to make sure you two put your full effort into this case, but as a mentor as well. I’ll walk you through your first few moves for a case like this. After that, you’re on your own.”  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, so I definitely did not mean for this chapter to go in this direction AT ALL. O.o I had actually planned to get a lot further into the story with a lot less words. But, hey, whatever, I started writing and realized that all of this was actually pretty important stuff, so I decided to keep it. I would have continued on to introducing Toothless, but I really like where this ended, so yeah. Hope you liked it! Promise the next one will be a bit more entertaining/exciting/insightful/whatever to read. ^.^
> 
> Fun Fact, since this chapter's on the topic of friendship: If a friendship lasts seven years, it will most likely be for life.
> 
> Also, I NEED HELP!!!! So, I realize my writing's not the most straight forward. What with the skipping from outfit description to background info to agents to car ride to dream scene to confused memories plus throwing in descriptions of futuristic technology, it gets a tinsy bit hectic. Please review if you think it's too disorganized/hard to follow/confusing/stupid/whatever. I'd love any constructive criticism that'll help me become a better writer. Thanks!
> 
> P.S. There's a supper subtle reference to Disney's Atlantis: the Lost Empire in the car scene with Jack and Punzie. Can you see it?


	5. What's in Stranger?

**Chapter 4: What's in a Stranger?**

    “Toothless!”

    “He-he-hey, Princess. How’ve you been?”

    Rapunzel flung her arms around the surprisingly large African-American boy’s neck. The blonde’s eyes had lit up at seeing the tall boy and she’d instantly bolted across the large warehouse to assault him with hugs.

    “We’ve missed you! It’s been, what? Three months?” she asked excitedly as she pulled back slightly to look at him.

    “More like three and a half, luv,” he answered with a chuckle. His voice had a rather distinct British accent.

    “Ugh, way too long!” she said pulling him in for another hug. “I’m so happy to see you!”

    “Hehe, that makes two of us, Princess.”

    “Hey, Bud. How’s it been?” Hiccup greeted, making his way over to the pair. Rapunzel let go of Hiccup’s friend, giving him air to talk. Released from a death grip of love, Toothless walked over to give his best friend a more relaxed bro-hug.

    “Hey, man. Not much goin’ on here. What with you?”

    “Eh,” Hiccup shrugged nonchalantly. “Not much, either. Few small jobs. Couple of car chases here and there. Jacked the Hope Diamond, but you know, no big deal.” Hiccups grin threatened to crack his face in two as he saw the realization dawn on his friend’s face.

    “Haha! What!?” Toothless shoved Hiccup jokingly, as if trying to shake a more believable truth from him. “No way! You bloody bastards actually did it!”

    “I have to say, I’m hurt, Toothless,” a friendly and teasing voice called out. The other three turned to see the approaching Jack Frost. “Didn’t think we could do it?”

    “Wellll,” Toothless drew out with a shrug. “Have to say, had my doubts, Frost.” Toothless came in for yet another hug with Jack. “And who’s this lovely new face?” Toothless asked. Merida had made her way over to their end of the warehouse, her hard to miss hair grabbing the darker boy’s attention.

    “Toothless,” Hiccup chimed in. “This is Merida. Merida, Toothless.”

    “Ah,” Toothless expressed as recognition lit up his eyes. “So you’re the Scotts princess Hiccup’s told me so much about?”

    Merida shot a dirty look at Hiccup before answering, “No’ exactly a princess, if yeh ask me.”

    Toothless shrugged, his teeth glinting brightly with an easy smile. “Mum said every girl should be treated like a princess.”

    “Does nit mean we should be coddled like one,” the red head’s tone was harsh, coming off defensive.

    “Wouldn’t dream of it, Princess,” he replied with a wink.

    Merida could only look at the strange new boy with a mix of surprise and suspicion, taken off guard by the comment. Even in the 23rd century, male dominance and superiority wasn’t uncommon. In the army, it had been different. Age, gender, sexuality, race, or planet of origin. None of that mattered. The only thing that gave you superiority was the number of stripes on your shoulders. Civilian life was different, with random men hitting on her in bars and strangers on the street forcing themselves on her in one way or another. This, coupled with the fact Merida had been treated like a “delicate lady” by her family most of her life, made confronting a male stranger so willing to treat her as an equal an experience she still wasn’t quite used to.

    “Alright, everybody,” Toothless called, breaking away from her and getting everyone’s attention. “Let’s move this party somewhere more comfortable. You lot have come a long way. So whad’you say to relaxing and getting caught up for a bit, eh?”

    He turned to lead the group through the extensive maze of boxes and crates that were scattered throughout the abandoned warehouse.

    “I like the new look,” Rapunzel commented, keeping pace with Toothless at the front of the group. He chuckled at the compliment.

    “Not a new look, luv. New hardware,” he said, absentmindedly rubbing the silver cuff around his wrist. They continued to wind their way through the surprisingly expansive network of abandoned crates and containers.

     The warehouse Toothless had been operating and living out of for the last two years was in better repair than the one the team had spent the night in a few days prior. This building had been more recently abandoned, the walls, doors, and ceiling all still intact to keep out the weather. There were empty crates and containers scattered throughout the massive area, abandoned with the storehouse, to create a maze of sorts through the building. It all formed something close to a massive house, with large rooms separated by crates, hallways of containers, and the like.

    The area Toothless had led them to was a sectioned off corner of the warehouse, roughly the size of a large living room. It was sided by walls of crates, stacked two at a time in some places, only one crate high in others, and completely sparse of the massive containers in others, allowing for a good view of the warehouse beyond.

    A few couches and cushioned arm chairs were scattered about the area, all mismatched and worn. Some had holes and stuffing leaking out, others strange and unidentifiable stains, but they all seemed broken in and rather comfy. A holographic projector stood in a corner, as if waiting patiently to be turned on and watched. A few smaller boxes and crates were stacked haphazardly throughout the area, breaking up the singular height of the furniture and giving the space a slightly unorganized and relaxed feel. It was as if no one quite cared what the area looked like, but managed to make it feel welcoming all the same. In addition to the large overhead lights drilled into the ceiling, the sectioned off area had a large collection of separate standing, hanging, and desk top lamps to illuminate the make-shift living room a bit brighter than the rest of the warehouse as the night pressed its darkness against the outside walls.

    An orange, lopsided orb sat in the center of all the chairs and couches, dull, lifeless, and strange in appearance. When the group came into the room, the sphere lit up, illuminating the space even further with a comforting warm glow and seemed to roll and flicker between lower and higher intensities of light. It gave off the faint impression of a hearth fire for families to gather around. Not that anyone still knew what a hearth or wood-fed fire were at the time.

    “I see you’ve fixed this place up then,” Hiccup noted as the five of them came into a sectioned off area the warehouse.

    “Yeah, well,” Toothless responded, moving behind one of the couches to fiddle with something hidden behind its back while the others filed into the room. “I’ve had quite a bit of extra free time since your lot’s last visit.”

     “Really?” Jack asked in disbelief. He plopped his skinny ass down in one of the armchairs facing the glowing orb, his legs flung over one of the arm rests with his back against the other. “That’s surprising.”

    “Yeah, I know,” the larger boy commented as he dragged a cooler out from behind the couch. He lifted it with a grunt to rest atop an ancient coffee table that was in the center of the room, partially covering the glowing fire-orb. He began tossing bottled drinks to his guests, all the while continuing talking, “You’d think with you lot hitting the top of FBI’s list, and all the riots your shenanigans have caused recently distracting the bobbies from everyone else-- oops. Sorry, luv,” he apologized to a disgruntled Merida, who had only just managed to catch a bottle thrown right her head. “That business should be booming. People lining up to get their goods without the worry of the police cracking down on them. But,” he gave a shrug as he popped the cap off his own metal bottle and fell onto one of the available couches, propping his feet up on the coffee table. “No dice. Don’ know what it is, either. Business hasn’t been this slow in ‘bout a year.”

    “Hmm. Wonder why,” Rapuzel contemplated as she popped the cap off her own bottle, releasing a fizzing sound as the contents inside bubbled over. She ducked her head to lick the runoff from her hand. The blonde had chosen to sit on the floor, right in front of the glowing, fire-like globe, her back up against Jack’s armchair.

    “Could be anyfing, luv. Sometimes people just aren’t in the market for what I’ve got to sell. Unusual, but not impossible. Oi! You,” Toothless suddenly dropped the subject as he directed his attention to an awkward Merida. The red head hadn’t made any move to sit with the others, instead choosing to stand uncertainly where they’d come in. She wasn’t used to this, not knowing what to do. Merida wasn’t what you’d exactly call a ‘people person.’ Strangers on the streets, she knew how to handle. Thugs, gang bangers, and cops were all things she had a system for. But this was different, this was dealing with someone she didn’t know and yet, had to treat...nicely? Merida had known Jack, Rapunzel, and Hiccup for years. Throwing a new, friendly face into the mix was enough to put her off.

    “Ay, wha’ do you want?” she challenged.

    The darker boy only laughed at her defensive attitude. “What I want is for you to sit down, luv. Take a load off and relax, will ya? I promise, I don’t bite. Often.” At the teasing gesture, Merida could’ve sworn she saw the boy’s eyes flash green. Not just a regular hazel, but a brilliant, glowing emerald with pupils slitted like a cat’s. It was something completely inhuman. She blinked, and it was gone, his eyes nothing more than their natural, dull hazel. She shook her head. Gotta stop bein’ so paranoid, she thought to herself, finally choosing to sit cross legged in one of the empty armchairs. She let herself relax slightly. This wasn’t so bad, meeting new people.

    “So, Merida, was it?” Toothless started, putting his feet on the floor to lean towards the red head across the coffee table. “You been takin’ good care of my boy? Hiccup said you were the best mechanic he could have. Besides me, obviously.” He added this last part with a smile, but the Scotts girl could see the challenge in it. She answered it with a challenge of her own, her smile confident as she replied, “Why don’ yeh take a look for yerself?”

    The other boy’s smile only grew. “Alrigh’, then. Hiccup, show us what you’ve got.”

    “Really?” Hiccup protested from his sprawled position over an opposite couch. “Do you guys have to do this now--?”

    “Hiccup,” Merida cut in, the threat in her voice evident as she never took her eyes off the boy in front of her. “Get yer sorry arse over hear so Aye can show this numpty wha’ real genius is.”

    “Ah, well thanks for the compliment, but I don’t think--”

    “Hiccup!” the two mechanics facing off yelled in unison.

    “All right, all right.” So with sigh and roll of the eyes, the verbally assaulted teen rolled off his couch, leaving his drink and comfortable spot behind.

    “I don’t get it,” Rapunzel stretched upwards form her seat on the floor to whisper to Jack. “Why are they acting like that? They don’t even know each other.”

    Jack gave a shrug as he explained, “They’re both gear-heads, Punz. Their kind are always trying to show each other up. It’s what they do.”

     The two turned their attention back to the face-off at hand. Hiccup had stomped his left foot down on the coffee table for all to see. His shoe and sock were already on the floor and he was rolling his pant leg up, revealing glinting metal beneath. From the knee down, Hiccup’s leg was nothing but smooth, solid metal.

    It was as if while creating a human, someone had just stopped using flesh and bone part-way through and had just finished the job off with metal. There was little difference between a normal foot and the one Hiccup was showing them. It looked just like a metal sculpture of a human limb, with the heal and ball of the foot and tiny metal toes that moved. It was just filled with a network of wires and cogs, the electric impulses from Hiccup’s still existing nerves giving it commands and power. The fully functional steel skeletal frame was layered with metal armor-plating to protect the various wires and intricate machinery inside.

    “Gotta say, Princess, you know your automail,” Toothless commented as he leaned forward to get a closer look at Merida’s handy work.

    “Yer no’ half ba’ yerself,” she commented, keeping a close eye on the boy mechanic, gauging his reaction towards her work. “Did nit have teh change much after Aye got him.”

    “Much?” Toothless asked, taken aback. “You shouldn’t have had to change _anything_. Just keep up the maintenance.”

    “Bah,” she scoffed. “Yer rippin’ the pish. I had teh correct ‘bout ten-ought things when Aye got mai hands on him.”

    “Look here, yah daft nutter,” Toothless stood up, his accent thickening as he contended with the scott’s abrasiveness. “You change anything on this beaut of a machine, yah might as well take a marker to the Mona Lisa. I had a beautiful piece of automail machinery here, and there you go, turning it to shambles!”

    The red head leapt to her feet to meet his gaze, though she stood about a full foot shorter.

    “Wha--?” she started indignantly. “Marker teh the Mona Lisa?”

    “Yeah, unless yeh’ve already nicked that, too.”

    A collective ‘Ooooh’ came from Jack and Rapunzel on the other side of the room, the two obviously enjoying the spectacle from afar. Hiccup, however, did not have that luxury. He was cowering slightly, still stuck between the two gear-heads bashing it out, unsure what to do. He felt very akin to a child caught between two fighting parents.

    “What exactly did you ‘have to change’?” Toothless asked sarcastically.

    “Well, fer one, the ball-bearings were nearly all rusted t’rough,” she began, counting the examples on her fingers. “Second, yer wires from FC4 were crossed inteh the soleus--”

    “They’re supposed to do that!”

    “I don’ know what manual you’ve been reedin’ ou’ of, luv,” her sarcasm was heavy, practically spilling from her mouth in a waterfall. “But yeh better check the date, ‘cause tha’s _never_ s’possed the happen.”

    “Actually, if you bothered to do your research, you’d find that crossing the wires like that leads to greater speed and flexibility!”

    “Wha’ aboot the toes, then? When Aye got this sad excuse for a leg, the pinky was nit even workin’!”

    “You don’t need a pinky toe! It’s useless!”

    Jack bent down so he was near Rapunzel’s ear, “Looks like Hiccup’s not the only one, huh?” he asked in a low voice.

    She giggled, still watching the argument, fascinated, “Guess not, or maybe she’s just like that with everyone and you and I are the exceptions.”

    Jack laughed at that. “I think you mean you’re the only exception, Punzie. She’s laid into me quite a few times, too,” he said with a nod towards Merida.

    “Can you even understand what they’re saying?”

    “Nope. But man, I really wish I had a camera right now. You see the look on Hiccup’s face?”

    Rapunzel couldn’t help but feel slightly bad at the laugh that escaped her. Poor Hiccup. He looked like he was in a combination of fear, pain, and pure embarrassment, stuck between the two dueling mechanics. At one point, he tried to carefully step away from the two only to be caught, mid-escape.

    “Oi!” Two distinct accents stopped him in his tracks.

    “Don’ yeh dare leave, yeh dampot.”

    “You gonna tell us who did a better job on your leg or not?”

    “Eh,” Hiccup was at a loss for words, knowing death would come swiftly, no matter which friend he choose.

    “Don’ pick on him liak tha’,” Merida said defensively. “Let the work show fer itself.”

    “How can it? With you messing it up so bad, it’s a wonder he can even walk straight!”

    “Oi! You better watch yer trap!”

    “I mean, you’ve even replaced the entire framework. What kind of metal is that?”

    “Not tha’ useless steel keech you had him hauling around.”

    “Obviously. Looks like you just fused some tin foil together.”

    “Oi! It’s an alloy _Aye_ made! Aluminum, fiber glass, an’ titanium, tha’ is.”

    The upset look fell slightly from Toothless’s face.

    “Woah, really?”

    “Ay. Let’s this dampot do his little dancin’ on rooftops easier,” she said, gesturing towards Hiccup.

    “Yeah...” Toothless was now contemplating the still exposed leg. “Definitely would make it lighter. Can see what you’re saying. What about the strength, though? Surely something like that is easier to break?”

    “Naw. Stronger than steel, tha’ is. Tested it maiself a few times before Aye may’d the body. Followed yer original design fer tha’, actually. Quite genius tha’ was.”

    “Yeah, thanks. That alloy stuff is right brilliant, though. Would’ve never thought of that.”

    “Bah, was jus’ an experiment, really. Tha’ thing with the crossed wires, though. Tha’ really true?”

    “‘Course it is. Diverts the electric impulses to the--”

    “Hey, guys. So, are we done here?” Hiccup cut the conversation short, eager to get out of the danger zone. “‘Cause I’d reaaaly like to go sit down now.”

    “Ay, alrigh’ then.”

    “Sure, whatever, dude.”

    Hiccup let out a sigh of relief, quickly retreating back to his comfortable position on the couch.

    “Ya know, you’re not half bad, Firecracker,” Toothless commented, holding out a hand and at the same time, branding her with a new nickname.

    There it was again, that glimmer of something... else in this new boy’s eyes. A flash of green, and then it was gone.

    After a moment of uncertain contemplation, Merida took the offered hand. “Yer quite a find yerself,” she complimented, a smile lighting her face as they shook. The two had apparently reached an unspoken agreement, having gained each others’ respect over the argument. Jack and Rapunzel glanced at each other. Must be a mechanic’s thing.

    “You know,” Toothless shoot at Hiccup, “She’s not near as stupid as you lead to believe, Hic.”

    Hiccup let out an expectant moan as-- “Oi!” _Wump!_ What he could only guess was a pillow-- honestly, it was too fast to tell-- came down solidly on his chest. The blow was so heavy, it knocked the air form his lungs for a quick second. When he was finally able to sit upright again, he saw Merida staring daggers at him from her own armchair while the other three only laughed.

    “Ow!” he said, exasperated. “What was that for? He was only joking.”

    “Alrigh’. So, you lot,” Toothless changed the subject yet again with ease. “You really did it, didn’t you? You _actually_ stole the Hope Diamond?”

    “Of course we did,” Jack replied confidently. “We say we’re going to do something, we’re going to do it. It’s all over the news even, if you want to have a look.”

    “Nah, that’s ok. I believe yeh,” came the dismissive response. “So were is it now? You find a buyer?”

    “Yeah, actually,” Hiccup said. “Punzie found him a few weeks before the heist.”

    The said blonde nodded vigorously, “Yup, traded it in before we came here. Absolutely ridiculous amount of cash, too.”

    “Uni or American?”

    “Uni, duh,” Hiccup responded.

    Uni-cash was a new form a currency at the time. Much like how today, we have different currencies of US dollars, pesos, the pound, the yen, and the euro, the future held universal-cash, created through the newfound interaction between planets and their economies. Uni-cash could be easily traded for goods across intergalactic boarders, though it was usually traded in for the planet’s circulating currency for use on said planet. Usually, it was only used in the exchanging of currencies across space, but for large deposits, transfers, or robberies, it proved useful in its own right. Being governed by other planet’s economies, as well as our own, uni-cash was a much more stable currency than any of that used by individual countries, and thus was more valuable for the purpose of storing large quantities of money at a time.

    “Damn, the Hope Diamond,” Toothless muttered under his breath, still in disbelief. “How in this galaxy did you lot manage to pull that off? I mean, how could you possibly manage to nick one of the world’s most precious jewels, right from under the bobbies’ noses?”

    “Eh, you know,” Jack started, off-handedly. “Bomb threat to keep the cops out, Hiccup’s tech and Merida’s bronze to get into the safe, and then we just blasted out a back door. Actually, if it hadn’t had been for Merida’s quick thinking and bomb expertise, we might not have gotten out of there in time,” the leader of the group added, giving credit to their demolitions expert.

    “You know, I’ve always wanted to ask you about that,” Toothless noted, directing the sentence towards said demolitions expert.

    “Aboot wha’?”

    “Well, Hiccup’s always said you don’t use any electronic triggers for your explosives. You know, no timers or even remote hand-held triggers. Most of it has to be manual, right? Why is that?” he finished, curious.

    It took her a second before she answered, having to finish a swig of her drink. After which, she answered nonchalantly, “Don’ trust ‘em.”

    “What? You’ve got to be kidding me,” the darker boy said with disbelief.

    “No,” she shook her head, sticking by her statement. “All tha’ electronics. The tymers, the triggers, even Hiccup’s stuff. Yeh can’ trust it. It gets knocked aboot, a wire comes loose, or yeh have someone close bai tha’ knows how teh cut the connection, tha’s it. Game over. No boom. Much better teh have a manual, then yeh know jus’ when the damn thing’ll go off.”

    Toothless contemplated this for a second before continuing, “Yeah, alrigh’, luv, I get what you’re saying. Bit paranoid, mind you, but still understandable. So, what kind of gun do you usually use to set off the trigger, then?”

    “Don’ use guns fer tha’,” she said.

    Toothless chuckled slightly, and, thinking the red head was joking, decided to play along. “Hehe, really? Alrigh’ then, what could you possibly use for a manual trigger?”

    “Archery,” she replied, her face stone-faced and serious. Toothless’s laugh suddenly jumped from playful to disbelieving when he realized that the female mechanic wasn’t joking.

    “What? You can’t be serious! That’s archaic. Why would you use something like that?”

    “Don’ trust guns.”

    “Ok, _now_ you’ve got to be joking.”

    “Well, Aye mean, Aye use them in a fire fight or when Aye need to,” she amended. “It’s not like Aye can’ use a fire arm. It’s just, for something important, like a job, yeh can’ always trust a gun. Hand guns always jam up, righ’ when yeh need them. Yeh can’ take a risk like tha’ when yeh only got one shot.”

    “Alrigh’, well what about plasma weapons?” Toothless countered. “Those run on nothin’ but electronic impulses from the hand; impossible for those things to jam.”

    “Do you even know wha’s in those things?” Merida asked, now taking her turn in acting disbelieving.

    “Like I said, electricity--”

    “An’ _plasma_.”

    “Well, obviously.”

    “Do yeh know how long plasma guns have been on the market?”

    Toothless’s eyebrows came together as he contemplated his answer. The question seemed rather random and pointless.

    “Um, dunno. Few years?”

    “Fifteen.”

    “What?”

    “Fifteen years those t’ings have been on the market.”

    “Alrigh’. So?” the male mechanic asked, not quite getting what the other was going for.

    “Soooo,” Merida said, becoming rather impatient at the other’s inability to catch on to what she was saying. “Those t’ings have only been in wide spread use for a couple of years now. Tha’ means there hasn’t been enough tyme to see wha’ their long term effects are. Every tyme tha’ thing goes off, it allows a millisecond exposure to plasma radiation. Exposure teh somethin’ like tha’ so often’s gotta do somethin’ bad teh yeh after awhile.”

    “Yeah, but they’ve done hundreds of tests on those things. The government wouldn’t allow them to be used if they were that dangerous,” Toothless countered.

    The response he received was a mass of red curls shaking back and forth.

    “Tests or no, we’re never goin’ know wha’ the actual effects of those thing’s are on people fer another couple of years. It’s jus’ like wha’ happened with cell phones a few of years after they firs’ came ou’. People did nit think anythin’ was bad aboot the cells, but then they were all caught with cancer and wha’ have yeh fifty years later.”

    “Um,” Hiccup pipped up, intruding on the conversation. “I think you’re talking about the cancer epidemic of 2060. You know, they discovered that that was actually caused by a simultaneous corruption of nuclear power plants’ systems all over the world at the time, causing major amounts of radiation leakage. No one knew about it at the time, because it was this giant scandal and everyone was trying to cover it up. Had nothing to do with cell phones.”

    “Yeah, well,” Merida brushed off the history lesson. “Still does nit mean Aye’m willin’ to trust those things.”

    Toothless let out an amused chuckle. “Geez, Firecracker. Looks like you’ve got some serious trust issues there.”

    “Wha’?” came the indignant Scott’s answer. “Aye do no’--”

    Her protests were cut short by Hiccup’s outburst of laughter.

    “Look who’s talking, Bud!” he called out teasingly towards his dark-skinned friend.

    “What are you gettin’ at?”

    “Well, for starters, you nearly killed Astrid before she even said a word to you.”

    “Yeah,” Jack joined in. “And how about the fact that it nearly took two months before you even began to trust me?”

    “And,” Hiccup added, “You damn near took my head off when we first met.” The shaggy haired boy then turned towards Merida. “Don’t worry about it, Mer. This sorry lizard’s got the worst trust issues out of any of us.”

    “Alrigh’, alrigh’,” Toothless conceded. “I admit, I had some problems with trust before. But I’m much better now,” he countered. “Seriously, I am,” he said in response to the chorus of laughter that started up again from the other two boys. “Look, now,” he said gesturing towards Merida as he continued. “I didn’t hold a gun to this firecracker’s head when I met her, did I?” At that comment, Merida shoot a very concerned glance at the darker boy. “And I damn near took in Rapunzel on sight and without question when I met her. I’d call that progress,” he finished, a certain essence of pride in his tone.

    “You see, that one doesn’t quite count,” Jack commented. “Punzie’s got that effect on everyone.”

    “I think it’s the eyes,” Hiccup noted.

    “My bet’s on the smile,” Jack countered. “Tricks you into believing she’s in no way dangerous.”

    “Well,” Rapunzel pipped up, joining in. “I’d like to think it’s my bodacious bre--”

    “Alrigh’, alrigh’,” Toothless managed between more chuckling, stopping Rapunzel short in an elaborate gesture towards her chest. “I get the picture.”

    “Oi, now wait a minute,” Merida called out suddenly, getting everyone’s attention. “Speakin’ of yeh takin’ this bean pole’s head off,” she said to Toothless while throwing a gesture towards Hiccup. “Wha’ Aye want teh know is how you two managed teh meet.”

    “Yeah,” Rapunzel agreed, excited about the new topic. “I never got that story, either.”

    Toothless glanced at the other two males in the room. “What d’you say, guys? Should we tell ‘em?”

    Jack chuckled. “It’s more of your two’s story than it is mine. It’s up to you.”

    Now everyone looked expectedly towards Hiccup. He contemplated the group for a moment before he gave a shrug and said, “Yeah, sure. Why not? The girls have a right to know.”

    “Alrigh’ then,” Toothless said, clapping his hands together and rubbing them excitedly. “Before we get into this campfire story nonsense, who needs another drink?”

    Though the group was already beginning to feel the slightest buzz from the beers they’d already drank, everyone called for another bottle.

    “Now,” Toothless let out in a sigh as he sank back into his cushy seat, all drinks distributed. “I guess a story is in order, then.”

* * *

      
    “So what’s the story, agents?”

    “Wha...?” Agent Faeley managed through a sleepy blur, the voice causing her to jerk her head up from her arms resting in the table.

    “Arghh!” Agent Bunnymund let out a disgruntled shout, pushing a collection of e-documents across the table and pounding his forehead against the desk, a string of muttered swears streaming from his mouth.

    “I take it it’s going well, then?” Assistant Director Mandalyn I. Moony asked, amusement tilting up a corner of her mouth. She dragged over an empty chair from a neighboring desk to sit near the worn out agents.

    No protest came form the owner of the desk, seeing as how they were absent. The entire building was empty, save for the two agents, assistant director, and on staff cleaning crew as morning light had yet to filter in through the building’s window blinds. The AD had arrived at FBI headquarters a few hours ahead of most other agents’ report times for the weekday shift to find that her two favorite agents had yet to move from the positions she’d left them in leaving the office the night before. From the tired and frustrated expressions on the two faces faces in front of her, she could gauge that the two agents had stayed overnight at the bureau, keeping awake till the early hours of the morning to research and track down the subjects of their case.

    She had suspected the agents had been losing sleep over the case since the reprimand they’d received nearly a week ago. Her hunch was confirmed when she’d found that the agents had stayed at FBI headquarters for what was now two nights in a row, giving the two access to information and research they wouldn’t be able to find if they had gone home to work on the case.

    “You don’t get overtime for this, I hope you know,” she continued. She set down two recyclable cups of coffee on the table, both held by one hand with a handle that had two arms reaching down to carry the containers.

    “Oh, Mandy,” Tooth said, the relief in her voice overwhelming as she reached for a cup of caffeinated salvation. “You are a guardian, truly. Thank you.”

    Mandy could only smile fondly. Though completely unexpected, she was happy to find her subordinates suddenly so dedicated to their new case. She gave the female agent time to take a few sips from her coffee before asking, “So what’s gotten into him?” She gave a nod towards Agent Bunnymund, who refused to bring his head up from the desk, even with the alluring smell of coffee so near.

    “Hmmm?” It seemed Tooth had apparently sunken into a trance with reveling in the comfort of her morning luxury. “Oh,” she said, coming to her senses, “He’s just a bit frustrated.”

    “A bit?”

    Tooth gave a small laugh, “Yeah. You should’ve seen him last night. Now that was rough.”

    “So what’s with the turn around all of a sudden?” Mandy asked, curious.

    “Sorry?”

    “Well when I first put you on the case, you two seemed like you couldn’t have wanted anything less. Well,” the director amended with a nod towards Bunny, “he certainly felt that way. Now here the both of you are, spending nights at the bureau, trying to get as much information as you can. What changed your mind?”

    Tooth gave a small shrug. “Not me, Mandy. This actually was all Bunny’s idea. I don’t know. I think it was being shown up by a bunch of college-aged kids that did it. Hurt his pride, you know,” she added with a smile.

    “Hey,” the two women turned their heads in surprise to the now aware Agent Bunnymund. They’d almost forgotten that the other agent was even awake. He was now upright in his chair, nursing the other coffee, a large red mark on his forehead that had yet to disappear.

    “Takes more than a couple of show ponies to hurt my pride, sheila,” he said before taking a sip form his cup.

    Tooth gave a small chuckle, “Alright, I’ll try to remember that next time.”

    “What’s with the new enthusiasm about the case, then?” Mandy asked the now aware Bunny.

    He gave a shrug and took a sip of his coffee before he responded.

    “Dunno, love. Guess I just want these ankle bitters out of my hair.”

    The director let out a small laugh as a knowing smile pulled at the corners of her mouth.

    “Alright then, I’ve got to ask,” Mandy started, changing the subject, “What’s the update?”

    She caught the concerned glance the two agents shared.

    “What?” she asked, a little incredulous now. “All this time you’ve been spending on research. With the new office, new security clearances, all the resources at your disposal, you must’ve found something by now.”

    The pair had been upgraded in their case status since being assigned to catching the notorious Big Four. This upgrade meant they were moved up a floor at FBI headquarters. Now residing in a larger open space and less agents crowding the area, the two had a large table residing between their upgraded hover desks, providing a perfect surface to spread out all of their research and documentation. In addition to new desks, the two had received upgraded security clearances, allowing them a wider range of access to police reports, traffic scanners, government files, etc.

    Tooth let out a disgruntled sigh, “That’s just the thing, Mandy. We’ve been on the case for two weeks now, and we have _nothing_.”

    “Sorry, love,” Bunny added, “But we’ve found about as much on these bushrangers as if we went looking for them in the gaffa.”

    “Alright,” Mandy said as a contemplative look crossed her face. “Well walk me through what you two have been doing then.”

    “Ok,” Tooth let out with a sigh. “Well, first, we took your advice about assuming they didn’t want to stay long in the area. So we decided to try and figure out how they’d try to get out.”

    “We checked the airlines first,” Bunny started. “Looked at all the purchase records of tickets for seats flying out of the Los Angeles area within a three day window of the heist.”

    “We were trying to see if any of the tickets were purchased by an account that was fairly new and was linked to a name or identity that could be forged,” Tooth explained. “We found three leads.”

    “So, we investigated,” Bunny continued, “and they all turned into dead ends. One was a green CIA agent, the others were simply screw ups in the system. Our theory that they might have flown out was now shoot to hell.”

    “So we decided to try and find if they might have taken another way out,” Tooth said, now taking up the ball. “We first thought we’d look at hover car or hover bike purchases in the past month.”

    “Bloody lot of good that did us,” Bunny commented.

    “Well, yeah,” Tooth couldn’t hep but agree with a shrug, “We got over a couple thousand purchase contracts of hover vehicles. An eighth of them were bought in cash, with no way to trace it to its source. And an entire other quarter had records that were so terrible, we had nothing to go on. It was just way too much to shift through. We did manage to find one lead though,” she added pushing an e-document forward for the director to see.

    “If you can call it that,” Bunny scoffed.

    Ignoring the comment, Tooth continued on to explain, “While we were looking through traffic records, we found this,” she leaned forward to point to a moving signal on the document in front of Mandy. She followed it until it disappeared.

    “That was an ID signal for a hover car. The city scanners lost it when it entered the abandoned area of the city, where scanners were never installed. We went back and found that the car had been purchased, in cash, about three weeks before the heist from a used car dealership,” after some shifting through the files scattered across the table, she found another e-document, which she handed to the director. “We pulled all records from the ID scanners surrounding the area and have been keeping an eye on them since, but nothing’s come out of that area since that ID signal was lost.”

    “Which means,” Bunny added, “that the car’s either still there, or, if it is their cars, they disabled its ID transmitters, rendering them invisible to all scanners. Which does absolutely nothing for us,” he added in a frustrated huff. “If they have an unmarked hover car, they could be anywhere by now, and we’d have no way to find or track them. It’s utterly useless.”

    The three then sat in silence as the assistant director took a moment to look over the documents Tooth had given her. The agents waited, expectant of a review of their investigative work. The director had been right when she told them that they were a little out of their depth in dealing with a case that was this high a profile. So, since their last meeting with the director, they’d been trying to prove themselves competent and worthy enough for such a responsibility.

    “Well,” the AD started, breaking the silence, “it looks to me you two have done all that you could’ve, given the circumstances. There’s not much for you to go off of in the first place, so the fact that you two made it this far to begin with is...impressive.”

    The two agents glanced at each other. Mandy was very rarely one for giving compliments.

    “Oh, would you two stop that,” Mandy suddenly said in an outburst.

    “Sorry, sheila?” Bunny asked, confused.

    “You two,” Mandy explained, still looking over the documents in her hands. “Stop it with your secret looks and stares towards each other, like you’re some kind of star crossed lovers. That’s how rumors start, you know.”

    The director doubted she’d ever seen Agent Bunnymund’s eye get so large, nor Agent Faeley turn such an amazing shade of red.

    Tooth started to stutter a flustered denouncement before Bunny jumped in with, “Hey, now, whatever it is that your implying--”

    “Implying?” Mandy asked incredulously, finally looking up from her papers. “I’m not implying anything, agent,” she said sternly, “simply informing you that if you keep that nonsense up, others most certainly will. Weather it’s true or not, is none of my business. Though the ridiculously distracting rumors that start around this office so easily are my business. And I’d rather not have to deal with any new ones, so I suggest you two ix-nay on the ooks-lay,” she finished off-handedly. Before the two agents could share another involuntary look, she spoke up again. “Anyways,” she said, tossing the documents back on the table, “back to the topic at hand. You two have done an exemplarily job on the case so far. I suggest, as a reward, the two of you go home and spend the day catching up on whatever sleep you’ve lost over the last few days. This case isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, anyways.”

    The agents’ reactions to this completely unexpected comment were varying. It was all Tooth could do not to let her jaw drop as Bunny simply contemplated his boss with a suspicious glare. Mandy giving compliments was practically unheard of, meaning that when the AD started dolling out complimentary day-offs, it was sure sign of the apocalypse.

    “But, Mandy, we still need to try and find a lead on the case,” Tooth noted.

    “You two aren’t going to find anything progressive on the case now,” Mandy informed with a sigh. “This group are most likely going to lay low for a while until their next heist, which might not be for another few months. There’s no telling where they could be, so there’s nothing for you two to go on as of right now. My advice for you two is to try to get as much background information on these thieves as possible until they make their next move. Try to figure how they work, how they operate, how they found each other in the first place. Get a hold of friends, family, acquaintances, anyone who might know anything. Hell, put up a hot line for any information concerning these four, if you think it’ll help. In the mean time, you have my permission to work with Ralph and Schweetz on the Baskerville case. They’re the ones that were assigned your old case after you two were given this one. I’m sure they’d appreciate some help.”

    With that, the director rose to her feet, dusting imaginary debris off her pristine suit as the agents continued to sit in shock at the director’s uncharacteristic act of empathy. With a nod and no further explanation, she turned on her heal away form the agents and began to stalk off towards her own office. Before she reached the elevator, she called back over her shoulder, “And don’t worry about clocking in for the day, I’ll cover you.”

    By the time the elevator door opened for the Assistant Director, the stunned Tooth had only just managed to gain enough of her bearings to stutter out a “Th- Thanks, Mandy.”

    The director only gave the two a smile and called out, “Just make sure that mess of your’s is cleaned up before you leave,” before the elevator doors closed on her, leaving the two agents alone once more in the pressing enormity of the empty FBI headquarters.

* * *

  
    “Alrigh’,” Toothless began, “So first thing first, you should know that I came across this tosser while I was still doin’ runs for the Red Queen.”

    “Wait a minute,” Merida cut in, “ _you_ were a runner fer the Red Queen? That was the boss yeh reported teh?” she asked, incredulous.

    “Well yeah, got mixed up in some stuff when I was younger and ended up part of her crew, running drugs ‘cross the border and ‘cross the country. Mind you, we had a different name for her.”

    “What was it?” Rapunzel asked, the slightest sliver of awe edging her voice as she leaned forward expectantly. She had always been a sucker for a good story.

    Toothless’s face suddenly became serious. It wasn’t a forced serious put on to dramatize the story, but a serious that came on suddenly and was very much real. It was the kind that’s brought on by hard memories that are best forgotten. It was like watching a candle, it’s bright and blazing flame blown out in a second, leaving nothing but blackness behind. His voice was awash with darkness and fear when he answered, the shadows of memories dancing in his eyes. If the monsters under your bed and the shadows that flitted the street walls as you walked home alone at night were ever given a sound, it would’ve been this. The voice of a single boy, stating his one and only single fear.

    “The Red Death.”

    Anyone of the criminal underworld knew the name Red Queen and would know to have the common sense to avoid it. The members of the Big Four were no exception. They knew the rumors and stories circulating the faceless name well enough to know she was not a force to be trifled with.

    The Red Queen was a name well known and feared wherever traveled along the West Coast. It was the name of a single person, a woman, who ran the largest drug distribution operation this country’s ever seen. It was one name, one person, but its meaning was so much more. Her real name had always been a mystery, unknown to those outside the circle of her closest confidants. The Red Queen was a name used by those that had never met or interacted with her directly. The Red Death was the name widely used by those who had.

    She wasn’t head of a drug cartel, she was the cartel. She was based out of Sacramento, CA, a city that had grown larger than San Diego or Los Angeles over the last two hundred years, with six of its eighteen sectors overrun by crime and violence. The reach of her many arms of operation stretched across the country, flowing into Canada and Mexico, like the kraken, slowly stretching its many tendrils outwards, swallowing an entire continent. She was known for having a drug running force of over two thousand, running her precious cargo anywhere from Cali to D.C. to Vancouver to Mexico City. Each runner was incredibly loyal and disciplined, the stories filtering down of what the Red Death had done and was capable of being enough to keep them moving.

    There was one particular story Toothless had heard multiple times of one runner that’d come back without the payment for a drop-off. The man had refused to pay and had shot at the poor kid until he ran. Not having anywhere else to go, the runner went back to his queen, hoping for mercy. He received none. The police reported it as a suicide, everyone assuming the kid had simply jumped out of the fifty story window. But anyone connected to the queen knew better. She’d simply chucked him out the window in a fit of rage at having found out one of her runners was incapable of completing a “simple transaction.”

    Simply not returning wasn’t an option either. If you never came back from a run or never reported for your next delivery, the Red Death would hunt you down as if you were nothing more than a rabbit to a wolf. Her force would find you and your body would be discovered the next day with no identification and no face. Once you were in business with the queen, you were in it for life, however long that may be.

    The Red Queen’s name came from the illegal drug she was known for distributing the widest, a hallucinogenic dubbed Cinnabar. In its most refined state, the drug takes the form of a red powder, consumed either through snorting it or smoking it, much like crack, or it could even be taken in the form of a condensed pill, though its effects take longer to kick in through this method. Said effects of the drug Cinnabar are quite difficult to describe. It’s something close to a relaxing hallucinogenic, but on steroids, literally. The main reactant of the chemical process being a small dose of Anabolic Steroids, with out which, the drug would prove useless. In the short term, Cinnabar produces a very relaxed and laid back mood for the user described as so intense that the world seems to actually slow down around them. A hallucinatory effect brought on by the drug, this “slow down” as it’s called, is accompanied by an increase in the intensity of of colors and lights observed by its users. Most would say it gives the illusion of being able to see everything at once and the resulting feeling of omnipotence.

    In the long run, if taken excessively over an extended period of time, not only does the drug prove addictive, but influential on users’ demeanor and behavior. Due to the presence of steroids, prolonged exposer to the drug tends to cause its users extreme mood swings, or frequent bursts of anger. These attributes are solidly found in the behaviors of the Red Death, who aside from being known for her production and distribution of the drug, is known for her consumption of it. Rumors claim her addiction is so strong and so well fed, that her very eyes have turned a permanent red from the chemicals of the drug.

    For Toothless, as had it been for most of the runners like him, it had been a living hell with his life under the Red Death. There was constant fear of being caught by the police while on a run. The fear that the next person you’d be delivering to was head of some gang or mob and you’d be caught in the cross fire of some random shoot-out and end up dead in a gutter. The fear that if you weren’t careful, you’d fall under the wrath of the queen and simply never be heard from again. The piss poor pay the runs provided as a way for the queen to assert her dominance allowing for him to barely scrape by. The constant fear and squaller forced upon him, making him wonder if every day was his last, with no escape in sight. It was in this state that he found his first act of mercy and friend in Hiccup.

    Noticing his friend’s obvious difficulty in handling the subject of the Red Death, Hiccup quickly picked up the reins of the story, pulling everyone’s attention away from Toothless and the private handlings of his own demons.

    “Okay, hold up a minute. First, let’s just establish where all this nonsense began. I was a freshman at Eastland when I ran into this useless reptile. So here I am, in the big SanFran for the first time _in my life_ , no clue what I’m doing there except to maybe get into a good college. And you know, I’ve been there for about, I don’t know, somewhere around two months, and it’s like I never left home. Still absolutely no friends. Even as a geek among geeks, there was not a soul that would give me the time of day.  On top of which, everyone was assigned to a matron, who made sure we were always studying and keeping our grades up. So essentially my dad in a dress, always looking over my shoulder to make sure I met his expectations, which I could never seem to do. It felt like I was to be forever stranded on my own meridian of misery.

    “Anyways, I was up late one night, working on a project. And I remember thinking that this was the one. This was a project for the school-wide science fair, to be held at the end of the semester. It was all grades, all students, and everyone was running around, rushing to make theirs the best or the biggest. I knew that if I could pull out the biggest and best project for the fair, it would definitely get me noticed, and, hey, maybe even a date.

    “So there I was, working in the computer labs on this huge project concerning the electromagnetic distortion distribution of the newer plasma jets and how it was very similar to one principal of Einstein’s original theories concerning time travel. I must’ve dosed off at my computer at some point, because it was suddenly two a.m., and I had class the next day. So I gathered my research, and made for my dorm room, all the way on the other side of campus.

    “I was half-way across one of the grassy areas they had between the buildings when I saw lights. It was the night patrol. And, I’ll admit, I panicked because me being caught out of bed, after curfew, on a school night, was not going to bode well with my dad.

    “But then, I see this figure against the night, just standing there. It was this black out-line of what looked like a kid, and I thought it was just another student, out after hours, and I was suddenly scared for him now, too, because he obviously didn’t notice the lights or know who was coming. And then I notice this alley, right behind the stranger, and it’s like I see salvation, and, thinking quick on my feet, I decide to kill two birds with one stone.

    “I start running, and I manage to tackle this kid into the alley. He starts struggling, obviously, and I just go, ‘Shut up or they’ll find us,’ and he stops. So we’re both still, laying there, waiting for the lights and murmur of voices to pass. When they do, I carefully get up and peek around the corner to see if the coast is clear. No one’s there, I turn around to tell the other guy, and next thing I know, I’m shoved up against the wall, my feet dangling inches from the ground with a forearm pressed against my chest and a knife at my throat. And I just see these green eyes glaring at me from the dark, and that’s when I realize, ‘Oh shit’, this is not a student and I’m in trouble.

    “And we just stay like that for what must have been a minute, him glaring at me while I’m about ready to wet myself, before he lets go. He just lets me drop, no threat or explanation, or anything, and he gives me this glare and just runs off down the alley. I didn’t know what to do then, so I just went back to my dorm, knees week, body shaking, still scared shitless.”

    “You didn’t tell anyone what had happened?” Rapunzel suddenly asked, interrupting the story.

    “No,” Hiccup responded, as if the answer was obvious. “Then I’d have to admit I was out after dark.”

    “But you had a stranger on your campus,” she countered.

    “Ay,” Merida joined. “One wit a dagger, no less.”

    “You know, I didn’t think he was much of a threat at the time,” Hiccup explained. “I didn’t think he was going to hurt or attack anyone.”

    “How could yeh be sure?” Merida asked, curious.

    Hiccup was taken aback by the question, having never had to consider it before. He had just known Toothless-- at the time, still a complete stranger roaming his school’s campus at night, with a knife-- wasn’t going to hurt anyone. He looked to his friend of topic as he contemplated the answer. Toothless looked up then, their eyes meeting, and Hiccup flashed back to that night. Bright green, inhuman eyes staring at him through the darkness. Completely strange, yet something about them was familiar.

    Merida shoot a look at the dark boy. She could’ve sworn she saw his eyes flicker between something inhuman for the third time that night. There was something off about it, something that told her it wasn’t just a trick of the light. That only left the question of, _If i’s no’ the light, wha’ is tha’?_

    Hiccup took a breath before he continued. “I guess for the same reason he didn’t kill me. I wouldn’t report him, because...he looked as frightened as I was. I looked at him...and I saw myself.”

    “Ahhh,” Merida groaned. “Tha’s no’ an answer,” she whined, throwing a pillow, which hit Hiccup solidly in the face. “Tha’s more like a love story.”

    “Ooof! Hey!”

    “Well, I think it’s sweet,” Rapunzel commented, her smile glowing. Merida rolled her eyes.

    “Come on, then,” Merida encouraged with a wave of her hand at Hiccup, “On wit the story, an’ no more sissy talk.”

    Hiccup gave a roll of his own eyes at his friend’s immature behavior, but said nothing, and continued with his story.

    “So, long story short, I didn’t report him because I thought someone that scared wouldn’t try to hurt anyone. I was going through classes the next day, trying my best to forget the whole ordeal because I thought the stranger would be long gone by then, trying to get as far away as possible. But, then, low and behold, I was on my way to my dorm for a lunch break, when I caught a glimpse of these unmistakable green eyes as I passed by the alleyway from the night before.

    “I stopped and back tracked, and sure enough, there he was, the dude that had almost killed me the night before, crouching in the same alley, just staring at me like some animal. I didn’t think he’d left the alley since I last saw him. Everyone was already in the dinning halls or in their dorms for the lunch hour, so it was just me and him, staring at each other, waiting for the other to make a move.

    “And then after about a minute of building up my courage, I took a step forward, and he skidded away. I wasn’t sure what to do then, because it was obvious this kid needed help, so I just asked, ‘Are you ok?’ No response. ‘Did you seep here?’

    “Still nothing. He just kept staring at me with these bright green eyes, and it was freaking me out, honestly. And then I took I shot in the dark and asked, ‘Are you hiding from someone?’ His eyes flicker and then he slowly just nods his head yes, still not saying a word.

    “‘Come on, then,’ I say, ‘I can help you.’ I motion for him to follow me, making sure the campus was still pretty empty and lead him back to my dorm. It’s a good thing I was in a single dorm, because I just hid him there for awhile, smuggling him food and things, until he decides to just leave one day. And I think, that’s it, he’s just gone for good, and suddenly a week later, I find him in my dorm room after coming back from class. I nearly shit my pants, yet again, and he’s just there, staring at me like he did before. He stayed a week, then he left again, and he came back a week later. It kind of turned into this cycle, of him showing up and disappearing, all the while I’m trapped in the nightmare they called a school. I did appreciate the company, though. He started talking more, and then we began sneaking out at night to explore or have some adventure together, and we eventually just became good friends, out of nowhere. The whole thing was just kind of...unexpected.”

* * *

  
    Ana let out a sigh as she ran her fingers through her hair.

    “We messed up, Bunny.”

    It took her partner a second of stern contemplation before he answered.

    “Yeah, I know.”

    “We should have never gone into that building,” disappointment at their own stupid actions filtering through her voice. “That basement exit was how those kids were going to get out, and we knew it. All we had to do was get the police to cover the exit and catch them on their way out, and this whole thing would be over. But no, we had to go in their like the idiots we are, making them take another way out.”

    “Sorry, sheila. It’s my fault. I’m the one that dragged you in there--”

    “No,” Ana interrupted her partner, shaking her head. “I should’ve known better. It was my responsibility as your partner to know it was a bad idea. I should’ve stopped you from going in there, but I didn’t. It’s just as much my fault as it is yours.”

    Aster let out a sigh as he contemplated his partner, who was now starting to pick up and file away their research.

    “Tooth, I’ve been meanin’ to tell you,” he said in a low voice.

    “What’s that?”

    “What you did with Mandy,” Bunny said, a seriousness giving his voice an edge. “You know, before. You didn’t have to do that. I said I’d take the fall for going into the museum. I knew how many points I had left. I was ready for it.”

    “I know,” the female agent said, never looking up from her documents. “But I couldn’t have you lose your badge and get taken off the case. Then I’d be stuck with some other cocky, arrogant agent that would have no clue what he’s doing. I’m already used to your brand of cockiness, so having to adjust to some other witless wonder would’ve just been too much work. And like I said, it was my fault.”

    Agent Bunnymund could only stare at his partner for the next few seconds before he let out a small huff of a laugh. A smile tugged at his lips as he turned to begin his own filing.

    “I’ll tell you what sheila, you really are somethin’ else.”

    The female agent simply smiled. “I’m not the only one,” she muttered under her breath, too low for her partner to hear. The two continued to work together into the early morning light, an understanding reached between them as they cleared and organized their research.

* * *

  
    Thanks to ingenious innovations and technology, as well as many years of study, the alcohol industry had finally managed to turn beer into a drinkable substance. Now something that could be considered enjoyable to drink by most people, the alcoholic beverage was easier to consume, and as a result, a quick way to get buzzed without even realizing it. This meant that the group of five fugitive young adults was quickly becoming intoxicated, lounging about on the chairs and couches of Toothless’s warehouse campout. All five of them were already slightly tipsy by the end of Hiccup’s story-telling, and everything just went down a steeper hill as soon as the vodka came out.

    The entire warehouse was soon filled with drunken laughter as the night wore on. The foreign accents only deteriorated so that the others knew that the two would be unintelligible by the end of it all. Jokes and tauntings, interrupted by more stories, brought on by references and inside jokes had everyone in tears of laughter, the mood light and cheery. It wasn’t long before Merida cracked out a retelling three of the others had heard a thousand times over.

    “...I’s hiade littered wit thah weapons o’ fallen warriors. I’s face scared wit one dead aye. Mah dah’d drew ‘is sword an’ CHOMP! Dah’d’s leg was clean off! Down tha monster’s throat i’ went.”

    The story continued with the group deteriorating into giggles. No one complained or minded that they’d heard it before, since Toothless’s first time hearing it. The fact that Merida’s story-telling skills had all of them in stitches whenever she started in had a part in it as well.

    Somewhere among the hours of laughter and talking, a friendly battle had broken out between Rapunzel and Merida.

    “You know I can never break a promise!” Rapunzel called out from across the coffee table, a bit louder than necessary.

    “Ay, bu’ yer a lyin’ tube if Aye evar saw one!” Merida accused as she straddled the back of an arm chair, each foot resting precariously on its own arm rest.

    “What? I’ll have you know, that I am not a lion!” the blonde retorted, her words starting to slur as her intoxicated brain misinterpreted the insult.

    “No, no,” Merida said, shaking her head and laughing as her faltering balance threatened to spill her from her perch. “Stap yer haverin’. Aye’m sayin’ yeh lied teh meh, lassie.”

    “Oh,” Rapunzel managed before she fell into a fit of laughter, rolling on the floor, amused at her own drunken stupidity. “Wait a minute,” she finally managed, catching her breath. “What are you talking about? I never lied.”

    “‘Course yeh did!” Merida called out before finally loosing her battle with gravity and toppling forward to land in the seat of the arm chair to an uproarious burst of laughter from the group. When she’d righted herself, she continued, “Yeh was talkin’ oot yer fanny flaps aboot how this one was nit no’ human,” she finished, waving an arm in the general direction of where Toothless was sitting.

    Rapunzel took a second in an attempt to work out what her scottish friend had just said.

    “Wasn’t not human,” she muttered under her breath. A huge “Oh!” escaped her with a tad too much excitement at having figured out what Merida had said. “I never said he wasn’t human, but I _never_ said he wasn’t human either,” she clarified. “--Uh, was human.”

    “What in this galaxy are you two talking about,” Hiccup asked, laughing at his own bewilderment as Toothless watched the entire spectacle, rather entertained.

    “Hiccup!” Merida suddenly addressed him ecstatically, as if she’d only just realized he was there. She suddenly leaned in close to him, laying herself across an entire second arm chair to reach him. She somehow managed a straight face as she lowered her voice to what she obviously thought was whisper volume. It just so happened that everyone else could clearly hear her. “Can’ yeh see it?”

    “Uh, see what?” came a confused question in response.

    “What are you going on about?” Toothless asked from the other side of Hiccup.

    “We’re goin on aboot how yer no’ human,” Merida stated matter-of-factly, turning her attention to the larger boy.

    “Oh yeah? Well, just what am I then?” Toothless asked, amused.

    “Yer a android!” Merida shouted, eyes large and accusing as she peered around Hiccup at the other boy.

    The entire group suddenly fell into an erie silence at the accusation. Toothless simply contemplated Merida, one eyebrow raised. And then, just as suddenly, the room burst into uncontrollable laughter, shattering the silence, much to the confused dismay of the red head.

    “Wha’..?”

    Toothless managed to catch his breath between laughing long enough to call out to Hiccup, “Maybe you where right after all, mate. This Jock’s a massive pillock if I ever saw one!”

    “Oi!”

    “M-M-Mer,” Hiccup began, gasping for breath. “Toothless isn’t an android. Realistic human androids aren’t possible for another fifty years.”

    “Bu’, Aye though’... Those cuffs,” Merida muttered, confused and disappointed as she mentioned the steel cuffs circling either of the darker boy’s wrists. “An’ theh aye flickers.”

    “Well, you’ve got it half righ’, I’ll give yah that,” Toothless said as the laughter of the room began to lessen. “I’m not human.”

    “The cuffs aren’t for androids, Mer,” Rapunzel explained.

    “You wanna show her, Toothy?” Jack asked from his armchair, excitement in his eyes.

    Toothless smirked.

    “You think she’s ready?”

    “She was ready to believe you were an android,” Hiccup noted, starting up another round of laughter from everyone else.

    Merida was not pleased with being left out of the loop so completely. She crossed her arms and shouted above the noise, “Show meh wha’ then?”

    “Ah, keep your trousers on, yah pickled Jock,” Toothless teased at her impatience. “Yah’ll get your show soon enough.”

    The laughter died out completely then as the larger boy rose to stand on the couch. The room was rather expectant as he removed the cuffs from his wrists, one by one, tossing them onto the coffee table.

    The cuffs clinked together as they landed on the wood, all eyes forced into focus out of their drunken blur as they concentrated on the figure standing above them. The other three already knew what was going to happen as they watched, excited for whatever spectacle was about to occur.

    Merida’s eye’s widened in disbelief at what happened next.

    It started at the crown of his head. It was a spark, a white, sputtering burst of light appearing as a halo. It stayed there for a split second before the ring of sparkling light began to travel down his body. Inch by inch, it quickly swallowed his torso, arms, waist, legs and feet, the light consuming hazel eyes and chocolate skin. It left behind in its wake, something completely inhuman.

    The clothes were still in place, everything from the fraying beanie to the faded shirt and worn jacket, the torn jeans, and the well used shoes. The being underneath the clothes, however, had changed. Standing at close to six and a half feet, the figure now standing on the couch in front of them was rather slender, despite the plentiful muscles tensing and rolling underneath his newly black skin. Not black by the standards of the human race anymore, but a black as deep and as dark as the night sky. His entire body was a shield. Black reptilian scales plated every inch of his being, some of them wide as a hand with spread fingers while others, like the ones on his face, were tiny as pebbles. He was still humanoid in form, with a head and shoulders, torso, arms, and standing legs. His face was slightly flatter than a human’s, his nose barely more than a small hill with slits. The hazel of his eyes from a few seconds before was gone, leaving behind the glowing, vibrant, unnatural green with slitted cat’s pupils that Merida had seen flashing at her throughout the night. With a shrug of his shoulders, his jacket slid off, revealing the worn tank top underneath that allowed for his enormous wings that attached at the shoulder blades, which were now extending slowly from where they’d been so tightly tucked away at his sides.

    He was a shadow of the night, his intimidating form standing above them as his wings blocked the light of the overhead lamps. A solid black form with nothing but glowing green eyes that shone through the darkness as his glare rested on the rest of the teens surrounding him.

    “Oh, stop showing off, you useless reptile,” Hiccup teased from his own couch.

    The serious face on the towering form broke, the blackness parting to show a smile of white, pointed teeth. A rumbling laugh escaped him as he picked up a couch cushion and threw it at Hiccup, who caught it before it hit his face.

    “No,” the now obviously E.T. boy contradicted. “If I was goin’ to show off, I’d do _this_.”

    And with that, Toothless bent his knees and pushed himself into the air, his wings fully outstretched to push downwards, giving him more momentum. The downdraft of the wingbeat caught everyone else off guard, sending a flurry of wind around them, tossing around hair and clothes. With another downward push of his wings, the black figure was now airborne, his feet dangling a few yards above the rest before he pelted away in one swift motion.

    The rest of the group watch in awe was their extraterrestrial friend soared overhead in the enormous space of the warehouse. His movements were strong and graceful as he glided on his own wingbeats, a beautiful dance through the air.

    “So tha’s why yeh learnt teh lift.”

    Hiccup tore his eyes away from his gliding friend to look at Merida, her eyes never leaving the graceful figure flying around above them.

    “What?”

    She finally looked at the brown haired boy then, their eyes meeting.

    “Tha’ dancin’ on theh buildings yeh do. I’ was so yeh could fly wit him, wasn’ i’?”

    Hiccup looked at her with curiosity and the lightest tint of awe. She was right, of course. After Hiccup had watched his friend fly for the first few times, he’d felt inspired to learn how to do so, himself. He was surprised that Merida was the one to get it right. The others had simply thought lifting was something he’d picked up while at school, but it was much more than that. It was a way to share something with his best friend. Merida saw that, and it startled him, truthfully. Maybe she was paying attention after all. Before Hiccup could reply, Toothless landed on the couch from before, the resulting gust of wind sending the air into a whirlwind around them once more, grabbing everyone’s attention.

    “Sorry, luv,” Toothless started, settling into a comfortable position on the couch, only now spreading his wings so he took up the entire length of furniture. “I usually wear those things when meeting clients and new people,” he said, indicating to the cuffs lying on the table, which were apparently holographic projectors meant to hide Toothless’s natural appearance. “Keeps them from freakin’ out, ya know?”

    It was another half hour of drinking and joking before something caught Merida’s attention, yet again. The newly discovered E.T. now sitting amongst them was laughing and joking along with everyone else, his smile broad and honest with those stark white, pointed teeth. They reminded her of a lion’s mouth, full of knives that could slice you to pieces, if they wanted to.

    “So why yeh called Toothless, anyway?” the red head decided to ask the strange boy during a lull in the conversation. “Aye mean, yeh’ve got teeth an’ everythin’. Wha’s wit theh nickname?”

    The black E.T. chuckled at the question. “Hiccup’s the one that gave me tha’ name. He says it’s ‘cause I’ve got no teeth on the inside.”

    Merida shoot a questioning look at the brunette, confused by the statement and looking for clarification. Hiccup only gave a shrug before he explained, “It’s true. Dude’s scary as fuck and has the mouth of a shark, but he’d never hurt a fly. He’s too soft. Couldn’t even kill me when we first met, even though I’d probably report him and get him caught. For all that bravado, he might as well be toothless.”

    It wasn’t until another few hours of stories and play fights and laughter that the group finally decided to go to bed. The four of them that had been traveling for the last week straight were worn out. The girls had already passed out, Rapunzel having somehow managed to fall asleep curled in Jack’s lap, while Merida had her unconscious body draped over the back of a couch, with the boys barely keeping their eyes open.

    So with a group consensus, Hiccup and Jack carried the two girls, following Toothless up a flight of stairs along one of steel walls of the warehouse. Jack was managing a snoozing Rapunzel, carrying her princess style, while Hiccup unceremoniously hauled Merida along in a fireman’s carry. The warehouse consisted of two floors. The bottom was the concrete floor littered with abandoned crates and storage units, among which the group of five had spent the last couple of hours drinking and talking. The second was located close to the ceiling of the warehouse. It’s towering height allowed the building to have a second floor while the first still had a soaring ceiling that allowed enough room for the cranes and moving trucks that had once come through so frequently.

    The second floor was really just a collection of large offices where paperwork for transfers and product evaluation to take place. Located mostly along the outer walls of the warehouse, catwalks branched between the rooms allowing for faster movement between them, with nothing but a straight drop below. Since its abandonment, Toothless had converted these spacious areas of work into bedrooms and smaller storage rooms for his merchandise. The E.T. host lead both of the boys to the girl’s individual rooms and pointed out where their own were. He’d moved most of their belongings into their respective rooms already, having received the delivery a week prior.

    Jack carefully lowered the unconscious Rapunzel into an already made bed. Pulling up the covers around her shoulders, he paused to take a moment and look at the sleeping figure. She looked so peaceful, laying there, her eyes fluttering while lost in a world of hopeful dreams and magic. Her golden hair was splayed out over the pillow, her lips parted as she breathed through them gently, her being locked away in an unconscious world. She’d stopped having nightly nightmares about Gothel only six months ago, her screams in the darkness about what her life had been waking them all in the middle of the night. It had taken nearly two years, but the screams and the thrashings had finally stopped, only coming to the surface three or four times a month now.

    It had broken his heart, to see such a gentle person like Rapunzel terrified out of her mind every other night with dreaming memories of a life not yet forgotten. As he gazed at her quiet face, Jack swore he’d protect her whenever he could. He never wanted to see that look of terror in her eyes ever again. Without thinking, he suddenly leaned forward, pressing his lips to her forehead, hoping the metal piercing his skin wasn’t cold enough to wake her.

    As he left the room and quietly closed the door behind him, he didn’t turn around for one more glance at the sleeping princess. He didn’t see the faint smile playing on her lips as she slept on, the ghost of a kiss filtering through her dreams.

    The door closed with a small click and Jack lifted his head to find Toothless, leaning against the catwalk’s safety railing across from Rapunzel’s room, smirking knowingly at him with his arms crossed over his chest.

    “What?” Jack asked, though he was sure he already knew what the look was about. The only response he received was Toothless raising the scales above his brow, an amused and teasing look glinting in he eye. With an irritated sigh, Jack shoved past the reptilian E.T. to make his way towards his own room.

    “You _like_ her,” the black figure teased, coming up behind Jack as he followed him along the catwalks.

    “Shut up.”

    “No, it’s really cute, honestly,” he continued to tease. “Star-crossed lovers never meant to be because they’re fugitives on the run from the police for crimes they didn’t commit. Oh, wait, that last part’s not quite right, is it?”

    “Yeah, well what you do isn’t exactly legal, either,” Jack noted.

    “Oh, ouch,” Toothless feigned a hurt expression. “Come on, Jackie, I’m just--”

    “Look, Toothless,” Jack stopped him, suddenly spinning around to face his tormentor in the middle of the catwalk. “Whatever’s between Rapunzel and I, it’s not serious, ok? It could never happen, because we’re on a team, it would only get complicated, and besides,” he added, his voice lowering as a sadness crept into his eyes, “she doesn’t feel that way about me. I don’t think she ever could.”

    And with that, the white haired boy turned to stalk off to his room, only pausing in the doorway as he heard Toothless say quietly, “Now that last part’s not quiet true, is it?” Jack shut his eyes in frustration and slammed the door closed on the lizard boy. What would he know, anyways?

    Hiccup heard the other door slam from under the covers of his bed behind his own closed door. After plopping Merida into her own bed and making sure she was alright, Hiccup had tried to go sleep. He’d shut his eyes, waiting for the exhaustion he felt to finally take over and drag him into his dark unconscious. Only his mind was running on overtime, refusing to let him relax enough to sleep. Memories of when he and Toothless first met were playing in his mind’s eye, dragged up by the retelling he’d had downstairs. They were like reruns of some sappy sitcom that you couldn’t help but watch, just playing over and over. And then that look Merida had given him when she asked that question, _“I’ was so yeh could fly wit him, wasn’ i’?”_ Why did that bother him so much? That she was the one to figure it out, the first one to get it right? It meant that she was paying attention, but to what? To him? That was ridiculous, she never listened to anything he said, or cared about what he did. But then again, maybe she did, and he just never noticed because it was him that never payed enough attention...

    Hiccup rolled over in his bed with a moan, his brain hurting from thinking too much about one thing, while memories of another ran through his mind. He pushed the notion out of his head, thinking he could just ponder it tomorrow. After a few more minutes of reruns on Hiccup TV, channel memories, he finally began to relax enough to start to drift into sleep. A small chuckle left him right before he fell into sleep completely. It was ironic, wasn’t it? That Hiccup had first met Toothless by hiding him in his dorm room from gang bangers that had tried to steal his drop-off from the Red Death, and now, Toothless was the one hiding them from a completely different threat.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, sorry this chapter’s not an exciting as I thought it’d be, but I needed to get a few important things out of the way. Also, I’m terrible at writing dialog between so many people at once, so this was kinda a struggle. (Sorry) -.-  
> P.S. There is a major reference to one of my favorite anime shows in this chapter with name-borrowing. It’s a little hard to catch if you’re not familiar with FMA, but can you see it?
> 
> Not Related: I’m currently toying with the idea of starting a RotBTD/ Alice in Wonderland crossover. To anyone reading this, what do you think? Also, I’m not entirely sure how to go about it without it just seeming like RotBTD characters thrown into a really weird and random situation. Any suggestions or ideas?


	6. Settling In

**Chapter 5: Settling in**

    The next morning was rather calm, with the early daylight filtering in through the enormous warehouse windows, the numerous crates and boxes casting geometric shadows across the concrete floor. The glittering debris of the air swirl in the sunlight, creating a cloud of faery dust, keeping everyone in a slumber. The occasional pigeon (yes, they still had yet to rid the cities of those rats with wings) hooted outside as they hopped from perch to perch, starting the day’s search for food. The sky was a bright canvas of blue on that late-July morning, slashed with white clouds, framed over a collection of five young adults sleeping off the effects of their drinking from the night before in some abandoned warehouse in a forgotten city section of Chicago, IL.

    It was then that a scream tore through the quiet morning air of the warehouse, ripping the air in two and causing the peaceful pigeons outside to scramble for flight in a fit of panic.

    “What is it? What’s wrong?” Toothless asked, frantic as he landed in front of Merida’s door and wrenched it open. 

    “Wha’ in the bloody hell _is_ tha’ thing?!” the red head screeched as she tried to scramble away from her bed. She was tangled in a mess of her own bed sheets on the floor, having fallen there in her panic.

    Being graced with the gift of flight, the scaly E.T. was the first to reach Merida at the sound of her distress. Jack was second to follow, skidding to a halt in the redhead’s doorway, steel staff extended and at the ready to battle anything dangerous. Toothless darted inside to try and find what Merida was so scared about. Rapunzel and Hiccup came running last, their rooms being the farthest. The three of them struggled to get into the room at once, all the while shouting questions of, “What’s going on? Mer, you ok? What happened? I didn’t know you could scream like a girl?” 

    The last question earned Jack a well deserved blow to the stomach, the redhead having finally disentangled herself from her sheets.

    “Firecracker, I don’t see it. What was it?” Toothless asked as he continued to scan her bed and nightstand area.

    Creeping forward carefully, Merida came up behind Toothless to peak over his shoulder at her own bed. He was right, whatever it had been that she’d woken up to, inches away from her face, seemed to be gone. The bed was completely barren, her sheets in a ball on the floor, and her night stand empty, save for the alarm clock. 

    “Aye don’ even know,” she began, keeping a suspicious eye out for anything that moved. “It was jus’ this weird—THEAR!” Merida let out a shriek at the small movement of something on the other side of the bed and fell backwards, scrambling away from her bed for the second time that morning.

    “Geez, Mer, I didn’t even know you could get scared,” Hiccup teased as he came forward to help Merida up. Toothless had jumped onto the bed at having seen the same movement that the redhead had panicked at. 

    “Ay, well, you’d be, too if yeh saw tha’ thing starin’ at yeh when yeh firs’ woke up,” Merida countered as she grabbed Hiccup’s hand. He hauled her up with a yank of the arm. The pull was a bit too enthusiastic and sent the redhead’s momentum forward a tad too far. She ended up falling into Hiccup’s bare chest, his arms out to steady her. The Scotts girl pulled away quickly, unable to stop the heat that was rising to her face at the unexpected embrace. _Stop bein’ stupid_ , she chided herself. _It was only an accident._

    Hiccup let out a small chuckle, “We might as well start calling you Red for how much your blushing right now.” He’d made the comment attributing the blush to embarrassment at being seen scarred. 

    “Don’ you dare—Eep!” The redhead’s protests were cut short as a green metallic object with glowing red eyes was suddenly thrust in her face.    

    “Is this it, Firecracker?” Toothless asked, dangling the thing by a tail.

    Merida had buried her face into Hiccup’s shoulder at the third sight of the terrifying creature that morning. She nodded, refusing to open her eyes or move her head away from the warm sanctuary of the brunette’s shoulder. 

    “Wha’ is it?” she asked. She heard laughter from above her.

    “Now _that_ ,” Hiccup began, “is an android.”

    Cautiously, the redhead opened her eyes and turned to face the creature hanging in front of her. 

    “Oh, look at it!” Rapunzel cooed as she came forward to get a closer look. “It’s so cute!”

    Whatever the thing was, Merida couldn’t disagree more with the blonde’s statement. The thing was creepy looking. Given the chance to get a look at the critter with preparation, rather than having it less than an inch from her face without warning and causing her to fall into a full panic, the redhead could finally see that it was indeed, only an android. It looked like the design was based off of some sort of lizard, its metal plates and appendages all stained green. The four feet curled around it as it hung upside-down from its tail all had three toes. A strange croaking noise could be heard from it’s wide mouth as it gazed around the room with huge, ruby eyes that glowed with what Merida would’ve called malice.

    “Hmm,” Toothless contemplated the creature, “I’d wondered where the little bugger’d run off to.”

    “Yeh made tha’?” Merida asked, not even trying to hide her disgust for the machine. 

    “Well, I was working on him,” Toothless explained. “Androids aren’t too hard, if you know what you’re doing. They’re basically just a collection of automail parts, welded together.”

    “Of course you’d be the one to make the first _lizard_ android,” Jack teased as he came to get a better look at the machine with the others.

    “That’s racist, that is,” Toothless replied jokingly.

    “What does he do?” Rapunzel asked, excited.

    “Changes colors,” the mid-night black mechanic explained with a shrug. “Has a personality program with a few bugs and wicked good eye-sight. He was kind of just a hobby while I waited for business to pick up.”

    “Can I?” the blonde asked, cautiously holding out a hand for the metal creature.

    “Yeah, sure,” Toothless replied, swinging the android around to rest in the outstretched hand. “You can keep him if you want. I’ve got other projects now that take up a lot of my time.”

    “Oh, thank you!” Rapunzel exclaimed, elated as the little lizard-esque creation scuttled up her arm to rest happily on her shoulder, both obviously pleased with their new pet. “What’s he called?”

    “He’s a Pigment Altering Synthetic Calibrator of Artificial Lybrotics.” With only a blank stare of incomprehension, the mechanic simplified, “Or PASCAL, for short.”

    “Ah,” Merida said suddenly, taking a step away from Hiccup as realization finally caught up to her. “Tha’s all fine an’ dandy,” she said, loud enough to catch everyone’s attention. “Bu’ could you lot please put some bloody _clothes_ on!?”

    With a quick glance around the room, it was plain to see, that though the girls were fully covered in the clothes they’d fallen asleep in the night before, the boys had all  but gone to bed naked. Hiccup stood shirtless in pajama pants while Toothless had spent the night in a white undershirt and boxers. Both of which was still more than could be said for Jack, who was completely bare except for his own pair of boxers. Though not exactly an unappealing sight, to say the least, the collection of bare chests and legs present so unexpectedly early in the morning was enough to embarrass the girls, who proceeded shoo them speedily from Merida’s room.

    It was another half hour before the whole group was together again, chatting away downstairs in a sectioned off area of the warehouse, dedicated to being a kitchen. It was complete with oven, stove, fridge, microwave, table with chairs, cabinets along its outer warehouse walls, and an assortment of other kitchenware and supplies. Though the area was spacious, it had an air of being somewhat cramped. With so many cooking gadgets and utilities, the large space was filled rather easily, the table with chairs in the middle given ample amount of room, allowing for easy movement around and accessibility.

    “Oh, an actual kitchen!” Rapunzel had exclaimed brightly at the sight. “No more microwave dinners and fast food pick ups. I can’t wait to finally cook something!” she proclaimed happily as she started sorting through all the kitchenware and utensils, organizing the kitchen and assigning each object a designated storage place.

    “Well, when I heard we were goin’ to have a cook in our midsts,” Toothless explained, “I figured I’d try to accommodate.” The E.T.’s smile glinted at the blonde’s enthusiasm. 

    “Toothless,” she said, spinning over to the mechanic, mid-sorting. “You are amazing,” she finished, giving him a peck on the cheek before continuing to clean up the kitchen. 

    “Ay, an’ maybe Aye could give yeh a hand, lassie—”

    “NO!” 

    The redhead was caught off guard by the unanimous response from Jack, Hiccup, and Rapunzel. 

    “Merida, you don’t really believe your cooking’s edible—”

    “What Jack’s trying to say is we think Rapunzel doesn’t really need any help—”

    “Really, Mer, I’ll be fine on my own. Anyways, you know what they say about too many cook’s in the kitchen—”

    “Ay, alrigh’ alrigh’. Aye don’ need teh be told twice mai cookin’s terrible,” Merida cut off the flustered back-peddling of her friends, slightly irritated, but receiving the message all the same. “Bu’ Aye _can_ boil water fer some tea.”

    “Right, and I’ll make coffee,” Hiccup offered, following Merida further into the kitchen.

    “I’ve got the eggs!” Rapunzel announced happily, already turning on the stove. 

    “Hey, Toothless, you got any bacon?” Jack asked, searching through the freezer.

    With a collective effort, the five of them had breakfast started, with Rapunzel and Jack at the stove while Toothless waited patiently by the toaster, butter plate and knife at the ready. The reptilian couldn’t help but raise a curious brow as he saw his scottish friend scoop her eleventh spoonful of sugar into her tea before she moved to sit with Hiccup and his cup of coffee at the kitchen table.

    “Alrigh’, so looks like Firecracker’s got a sweet tooth,” the mechanic said with a chuckle to a quietly humming Rapunzel to his left.

    The blonde giggled at the comment, dropping her humming tune, “Oh yeah, Mer’s always been like that. I think it’s a family thing. I’m pretty sure she’s actually mentioned how she would always steal treats for her brothers from the kitchen back home.”

    “Woah, never knew the hothead had siblings.”

    “Yeah, two younger brothers, actually. They’re twins. Used to be triplets, but...”

    “Used to be? Sheesh, what happened?”

    Rapunzel spared a glance over her shoulder at the table, making sure the redhead was still distracted by a chattering Hiccup. She turned back around and caught a glare from Jack, silently warning her not to continue with the story. The blonde made a well-he-really-should-know face. Jack gave a tiny shake of his head.

     _It’s her story, Punz._

_But she’s never gonna tell him._

_That’s her decision._

_But everybody else knows. So should he._

    Jack gave a concerned glance at said redhead of topic over his shoulder.

     _Fine_.

    For the entirety of the silent conversation, Toothless stood back, quietly admiring the way the two young adults were so perfectly in tune with one another. How could Jack not see that they were made for each other?

    Rapunzel spun around quickly to finish the conversation in a low voice.

    “All three of Merida’s brothers were kidnapped when she was younger. She was the one to save them and get them back home. But not before one of them was killed...”

    “Blimey,” Toothless let out in a breath, completely stunned by the revelation.  
 

   “Yeah,” Rapunzel commented, a sadness crossing over her face. “It’s still hard for her to talk about.”  
 

   Toothless turned to look at the redhead, laughing and joking so easily with Hiccup. Looking at her now, you would’ve never guessed that Merida would have a hard time talking about anything. _Guess that’s what we all have in common_ , Toothless thought as the redhead playfully shoved the brunette, obviously telling him off about something, but with a joking smile and cheerful glint in her eye, all thoughts of dead brothers and dangerous kidnappings out of her mind.  
 

    _We all have a past we’d rather forget._  
  


* * *

  
    “Vanellope von Schweetz, nice to meetcha!” 

    The rather short and tiny FBI agent had bounced over to greet Aster and Ana as  soon as she’d seen them. Though she was old enough to go through and graduate the FBI’s training school, the girl was obviously pretty young to be assigned such a high case status as the Baskerville case. She couldn’t be any older than twenty-four. _Great_ , Bunny thought, _a kid’s handling our old case_. The female agent’s medium length black hair was tied loosely back with a red hair tie. She had on a teal blouse that matched the leggings under her brown skirt. The girl—Vanallope Bunny remembered—had a face that never seemed to stop smiling. Her green eyes glittered with enthusiasm as she ushered them over quickly to her and her partner’s desks for introductions. 

    “And this is my partner—” She stopped mid-sentence at noticing the absence of said partner. “Hey Ralph!”

    A large guy that must’ve been at least as tall and as wide as the Unit Chief, with hands the size of dinner plates, looked up from his work a desk away.

    “What?”

    “Come on, Stinkbrian! Come over-r-r and meet the agents who are s-s-supposed to help us with our c-c-case. _Duh_.”

    The young agent payed no mind to her own stutter as she urged her partner over. Strange, really, since most stutters were a sign of self-consciousness, which this girl was clearly lacking. It was almost as if she was hyped up on too much candy, way too energetic and friendly, bouncing around headquarters, making sure everyone knew everyone.

    “Okay, okay. Hey, and get that glitch of yours under control,” the large man replied, joking as he stood to come over to the group.

    “Whatever, Admiral Underpants, just get your m-m-molasses moving.”

    “Calm down, President Fart Feathers, I’m coming.”

    The second agent was much older than the first, nearly old enough to be her dad from what Bunny could tell. It was obvious he wasn’t from how different the two looked, but still, the way they interacted and teased one another was a sure sign that the agents known each other for years and that the older agent was used to the younger one’s childish antics.

    “W. I. Ralph. Most just call me Ralph,” the man introduced, offering an overly large hand for Aster to shake.

    “You prefer to go by your last name?” Tooth asked curiously as she took her turn to shake Ralph’s hand after Bunny.

    “Trust me, if you knew my first name, you’d understand.”

    “I gotcha, mate,” Aster said with a chuckle, “E. Aster Bunnymund, and this is my partner, Ana Faeley,” Bunny explained, gesturing to himself and his own partner. After a few more small pleasantries, Aster was ready to move forward. He and Ana were well rested from their day off and were looking forward to get back to their old case. Excitement sparked the air of determination behind his eyes as the prospect of a case with some action.

    “Alright, let’s get started. Where are you guys on the Baskerville case so far?”  
  


* * *

  
    “Angus, look at yeh, yeh beauty!” Merida exclaimed, laying herself over the hood of a 2167 Chevrolet Impala and stroking it fondly. The car itself was jet black with a sleek shape and attractively retro look, though it was rather archaic by modern day standards. 

    “You’ve spent the last year working on _this_ , Firecracker?” Toothless asked incredulously, having followed Merida into the make-shift garage that was simply yet another sectioned off area of warehouse. After some incessant coaxing from the redhead, the E.T. had lead Merida to where he’d been keeping the vehicle. Jack and Rapunzel were still in the kitchen, cleaning up from breakfast.

    “Ay,” she replied, “Isn’ he a braw one? Aw, I’ve missed ya, laddie,” she commented as she continued to stroke the car, talking to it as if it were a person, or more aptly, a pet.

    “And so, does—ah, ‘Angus’ run then?” The scaly mechanic asked, perplexed by the given name of the car.

    “‘Course he does!” Merida exclaimed, offended by the question. “Jus’ got a wee bit of trouble gettin’ him teh move, is all.”

    “So, basically, no,” Hiccup clarified, joining the two in the vehicle storage area.

    “An’ Aye expect yeh know much aboot cars then?” Merida sarcastically asked the snarky teen.

    “Well, I know that if they don’t move, they’re pretty much useless,” came the equally sarcastic response. “But what would you expect from a car that you got from a _junk yard_. I mean, look at it, it even has wheels and everything. Admit it, Red, you got a dinosaur.”

    “Oi! Watch yer trap. At leas’ Aye know how teh fix mine,” Merida taunted the brunette teen. “Angus’ll be up an runnin’ in no tyme, once Aye get the parts. An’ Aye told yeh no’ teh call meh tha’, ” she added as an afterthought.

    “Whatever, Red,” Hiccup teased. “Besides, what’s the point of having an automail mechanic that can’t fix your bike for you every now and then?”

    “Speaking of,” Toothless interjected, “Come over here, dude. I want to show some of the modifications I made to the Night Fury.”

    Hiccup followed Toothless over to the other side of the garage, leaving the redhead to cuddle her precious Impala. There, they found a Honda 47 race-ready Hover Motor Bike. The same color as Merida’s Impala, the Night Fury lived up to its name. Jet black, the bike was intimidating, with a large form and sharp edges. The bike was one of only a few that were produced as Honda’s Night Fury line. From what Toothless told Hiccup of the modifications he’d made, the bike was twice as fast, capable of reaching speeds of close to 300 mph. It’s handling was improved and the plasma engine could now run further and longer on a lesser charge. 

    “You’ve put some work into it then,” Hiccup noted with a slight bit of awe in his voice. 

    Toothless simply shrugged. “Like I said, had a bit of free time, lately, so I figured I’d at least be useful.”

    “Well, thanks, Bud. I appreciate it,” Hiccup said with a smile.

    “Anytime, _Dragonhunter_ ,” Toothless teased with his own nickname for Hiccup.

    “Ah, shut up, you useless reptile,” the brunette combated, giving his friend a shove. 

    Though he doubted he’d say it out loud, Hiccup was beyond happy at being back together with his best friend. The two had a special bond that’s rare to come by. The scaly mechanic and brunette genius clicked on a level that was almost immeasurable, despite their awkward beginnings. They just got each other in a way that would be difficult to describe to others. The two different brands of sarcasm mixed together in a perfect blend of personalities. They were both each other’s first and best friends, having founded each other when both were in their greatest time of need. They’d bonded in silence and adventure, creating something that wouldn’t easily be broken. Often times Hiccup felt Toothless was the only person on the planet he could talk to, despite being surrounded all the time by the rest of the Big Four. Sure they were all friends and they got along great, but sometimes, you just need that one person that gets you the most. And now, Hiccup had that back.  
  


* * *

  
    “So what’s with Mr. Grumpy face?”

    Agent Faeley looked up from the file she was reading to find the tiny Agent Schweetz leaning towards her from the other side of the desk.

    “Sorry?”

    “You know, t-t-tall, dark, and grumbly,” the younger agent explained, putting on a mockingly upset voice at the last word while throwing a meaningful glance towards Agent Bunnymund. Tooth looked towards her partner, who was quietly reviewing files with Agent Ralph a desk away. The two pairs of partners had been getting along very well ever since their first introductions. After only a week, the senior agents had helped Schweetz and Ralph make exceptional headway on the Baskerville case, keeping care to not forget the check-ups on their own case. Tooth couldn’t see anything wrong with Bunny. Actually, since getting a chance to work on their old case again, Agent Faeley had noticed that her partner’s attitude had greatly improved. The Australian’s mood had lifted, no longer grumbling about their current case. He even managed to be less infuriatingly cocky than usual, which Tooth couldn’t help but be grateful for.

    “What do you mean what’s up with him?”

    “Well, every time you guys go back to work on your own case together-r-r, he gets all...you know.” Vanallope made an exaggerated “grumpy” face, with a furrowed brow and pursed lips, to communicate what she meant. 

    “Oh, that,” Tooth said as a small laugh escaped her lips at the child-like gesture. “I guess the case is just getting to him, is all.”

    “Tough one, huh?” Vanallope asked, sympathy tinging her eyes. Her stutter had vanished. It seamed that whenever the kid was excited or hyped-up, which was most of the time, that was when her stutter was prominent, her excess energy making her trip over her own words. When she was calm or contemplative, like she seamed to be now, the stutter simply faded away.

    “Yeah, we haven’t found much since we’ve been assigned to it. You can tell it’s effecting Bunny. He’s always trying to prove himself, which I think is why hard cases upset him. For some reason I think he feels like he’s looked over sometimes, despite his cocky attitude, and solving cases, especially the big ones, just makes him feel noticed. I am kind of worried about him on this case, though,” Tooth added, contemplating her partner from afar.

    “Really?”

    “Yeah, he’s got some history with one of the perps and it seems to be getting to him.”

    “Better be careful with that, sister. That’s always a sure sign of trouble.”

    “No, I think I’m just over thinking it. I’m sure Bunny’ll be able to keep his emotions out of the case.”

    “That’s what I thought about Ralph on the Turbo case we had a year back.” That got Ana’s attention. Ralph had always seemed like the solid one of the two partners. Tooth had always seen it as he was the level-headed one that kept the over-active Vanallope in line. To hear he let his emotions in on a case came as a surprise to the female agent.

    “What happened with that?”

    “Well, we were investigating a murder that turned out to be the work of this famous race car driver gone insane. This one guy got involved in the case. Name like Felix or Fix-It, or something stupid like that. Anyways, turns out Ralph had some bad history with with this Fix-It guy, somethin’ about him always showing Ralph up in college or whatever. I didn’t think it was going to be a big deal, you know, trust in your partner and what not. But Ralph took it the wrong way. He was convinced that this Felix guy did it, and wouldn’t listen to anyone else, the big doo-doo brain. It nearly cost us the case and we almost lost the real perpetrator while trying to send an innocent man to jail.”

    “Wow,” Tooth let out, at a loss for words. Looked like Ralph could get just as over-emotional as Vanallope and the both of them needed each other to stay in line. It was like Yin and Yang, harmony couldn’t exist without one or the other.

    “Yeah, and that’s not the worst part,” the smaller agent continued. “Ralph was so caught up in his sugar-land fantasy of this innocent dude being the bad guy, he turned into this entirely other person. I couldn’t even recognize him at times. It was like I’d lost my partner.”

    Tooth couldn’t help but look towards her own partner again. Could that really happen? Was there even the slightest chance that Bunny could lose himself going after Frost? That she could lose her partner? The thought worried Ana. Sure they had their differences, and they didn’t always get along. There were some days she couldn’t even stand to talk to him, he’d made her so mad. But still, she’d said it before, hadn’t she? _“I couldn’t have you lose your badge and get taken off the case... having to adjust to some other witless wonder would’ve just been too much work.”_

    Tooth truly didn’t think she could handle working with anyone as her partner other than Bunny. She just hoped she’d never have to.

 

* * *

  
    Throughout the week, the temperature was on a noticeable rise, reaching nearly 49 degrees Celsius (that’s 120 in Fahrenheit) by the end of the week, the hottest summer heat Chicago had seen in over fifty years. Despite technological advancements, there have yet been developments of any methods to control the weather. It seemed like the summer was having one last heat wave, its own temper tantrum in protesting the oncoming autumn. Since the team’s new hide out was completely archaic in its absence of a central cooling system, the heat was overwhelming, gathering and building in the warehouse, despite all the open windows and scattered collection of fans set to their highest settings. The overwhelming temperatures had reduced everyone to lazing slugs, with bodies slung over couches, chairs, and even crates, their brains slowly melting along with their bodies as sweat dripped and pooled.

    The boys had attempted to stave off boredom by trying their skill at a few old fashioned hand-held video games Toothless had laying about, the movement required of modern game consoles proving too much for the heat. Jack and Hiccup managed a few tries at some war game with ancient weapons and uniforms that were still in camouflage, the games of thefts and car jackings proving themselves boring when compared to the boys’ previous real life experiences. Toothless watched the game lazily for about an hour while sprawled in the shade of an empty cargo crate, soon falling asleep under the weight of the weather. 

    The girls were laid out on a couch in front of the holographic projector, watching mindless television shows and dramas, their brains barely active enough to keep track of what was happening on screen.

    Almost everyone was stripped to just short of nude, Toothless being the exception, in full out white clothes that were an attempt to shield his black scales, which drew enough of the sun’s rays to make the heat near lethal. The girls were in sports bras and shorts. Merida was managing in boxers she’d nicked from one of the boys, while Jack barely had the energy to appreciate the tight running shorts Rapunzel was sporting. The boys were down to nothing but their own boxers, their bare chests heaving in the humid heat while sweat sheened both sets of lithe muscles. 

    After a few go rounds, even the hand-held games proved too much excitement for the weather and the boys gave up, resulting in them flopping back on the mattress they’d been using as a couch in the middle of the floor. There were a few attempts, with half-hearted pushing and slapping, to start up a teasing war. Eventually, the the heat proved too much and enveloped the two into a dreamless sleep.

    One tan torso, stamped with a black, twirling dragon, next to one pale one, dotted with its own marks of long, white scars and healed over burns. When he rolled over in an subconscious sleep gesture, Jack revealed a network of long, thick scars crossing each other over and over across his back. It was a map, laid out on human skin, of pain and suffering experienced long ago. 

    Toothless, for the most part, seemed able to ignore the markings completely. Surprising, really, given that he was the only one of the group seeing them for the first time. It could be assumed that growing up as a monstrous black lizard on a planet filled with human eyes, always judging or glaring, teaches one to ignore the identifying marks of others, no matter what they may be. The others were used to the scars, having seen them and the melded flesh many times before, though the first couple of times he’d exposed his skin to them were still conflicting memories, floating in Jack’s subconscious.

    It had started with a heat wave, much like the one they were experiencing now, with everyone wandering around home base with close to nothing on. That is, everyone except Jack. Being an E.T. of his particularly chilly nature, Jack found it hard to handle heat of any kind. Despite this, he spent most of the heat wave in a t-shirt, refusing to remove it in front of the rest of his team. It was only a matter of time before the others became curious.

    “Jaaaaaaack.”

    “Ugh. What, Merida?”

    “Taps aff. Can’ yeh fix this damned weather?”

    Jack let out a sigh, the relentless heat stealing any energy he would’ve had to become upset at this point. “No, Merida. I’ve already told you, I can only change the temperature by a few degrees, and not even for that long in this heat. Any snow or ice would only melt. I don’t have the energy, anyways.”

    She let out a groan. “Hiccuuuuuuuuuup. Can’ yeh do somethin’ wit all thah brains of yers?”

    “You can’t control the weather with technology, Mer,” Hiccup said listlessly. “It’s scientifically impossible.”

    Merida let out another moan, sinking further into the couch in her disappointment, her red curls spread out over the couch back to keep them from trapping the heat on her neck. This heat wasn’t near as bad as the one they’d experience a year later with Toothless, but it was still enough to have all four of the them complaining and moaning like the teenagers they were. 

    “Hey, Jack?” Rapunzel asked suddenly. She was rather bored with so much lazing about, but the heat restricted any exertion to distract herself, leaving her only relief in the people around her.

    “Hmmm?”

    “How can you possibly stand this heat with your shirt still on?”

    Everyone perked up a little at the question. Of course they’d all noticed their leader’s reluctance to strip his chest bare, but an unspoken agreement stopped anyone from asking about it. The question always somehow seemed stupid or intrusive. But now, with the fact laid out in the open, everyone strained their ears eagerly for an answer and a distraction. It was second before Jack managed to find an answer.

    “You know, I just don’t think the heat bothers me that much. I’m naturally colder.”

    The rest could see straight through the pathetic excuse as clearly as if Rapunzel had painted it on a wall.

    “Jack,” Hiccup started, “If your body temperature is naturally colder than the rest of ours, than the heat you feel would be greater than what we experience due to a heightened volume of contrast.”

    Jack closed his eyes in frustration. Why’d _his_ team have to be full of the geniuses that couldn’t mind their own damn business? This was a topic he needed to avoid.

    “Well what’s it matter to you anyways? It’s not your business and it’s not worth talking about,” he said with as much finality as he could, standing as he did so to leave the room and the other three. But before he could leave, the white-haired E.T. suddenly felt a hand gripping the back of his shirt, refusing to let go.

    “Ah, come on, Frosty, yeh can’ really expect teh get away tha’ easily,” Merida teased, trying to drag their leader back into the room by the hem of his shirt.

    “Actually, yes, I can. Let go, Mer,” he said sternly, irritated by the whole spectacle. 

    “Wha’ do you guys think he’s hiddin’?” Merida called over her shoulder to the others before she quickly let go of the shirt to lunge forward and lift the skinny teen by his middle.

    “Wha—Merida, put me down!”

    “Mmmmm, alrigh’,” the redhead agreed cheerfully before throwing Jack onto an available couch and proceeding to sit on him, pinning him in place. 

    “So, wha’ do you lot think?” she asked again. “Aye think i’s an embarrassin’ tattoo he does nit want us teh see.”

    “Embarrassing how?” Rapunzel pondered, joining in on the fun.

    “Maybe it’s a tramp stamp,” Hiccup teased, “Now that’d be sexy.”

    “Ay, or maybe i’s a dragon tattoo,” Merida suggested, receiving a pillow to the head with a shout of protest from Hiccup at the insult. Merida was still chortling when Jack finally managed to wriggle out from under her, effectively flipping the redhead over the back of the couch.

    “Oi!” came the protest as a cloud of red curls popped up from behind the couch back.

    “I’m done with this stupid game,” Jack said, his tone making it obvious he didn’t think it a game at all, as he made a beeline for the door. He had to get out of here before this went any further—

    “Oh, come on, Jack, we’re just having some fun,” Hiccup complained as he lunged forward to grab Jack’s shirt. 

    “Hiccup, _let go_ ,” the older boy commanded, trying to pull away. Hiccup refused to release the fabric as Jack struggled to get as far away from the others as possible. Jack pulled one way as Hiccup pulled another.

    “Just tell us what’s—”

     _Riiiiiiiiiip._

    Jack heard Rapunzel gasp. Merida let out an awed “Jings Crivvens” as Hiccup just stared, wide-eyed and disbelieving as he finally let go of the older boy’s shirt. Jack could only stand there, his face heating up, his body quaking from embarrassment, as half of his shirt hung from his body, the clothing ripped in two. He felt like he was on fire, with everyone’s eyes boring into him from all sides, locking him in place. Only part of his pale skin was exposed, but it was enough. The others could clearly see the scars that covered his body. Thick ropes criss-crossed over his entire back that were a tell-tale sign of lashings from a whip. What could’ve only been cigar burns dotted his torso above the seven white gashes that ran over his abdomen. There was the perfect outline of an animal’s bite mark standing out on his now exposed right shoulder. One after another, scar after scar, marked his skin, labeling him as an outcast, as a freak. It was a map, laid out on human skin, of pain and suffering experienced long ago and it told the others exactly where he’d been, the shame of it overwhelming.

    It was a moment before Jack could regain control of his limbs and he darted from the room. He was grateful of the others for not trying to follow him. They just stood back and watched him leave, still too stunned to do anything. Once he was back in his room and the door slammed shut, Jack stripped his off torn shirt completely, letting it fall to the floor. He threw himself onto his bed, leaving him to stare a the ceiling. The white-haired adolescent let out a frustrated sigh as he dug the heals of his hands into his eyes, trying to blot out the image of the other three’s shocked faces that seemed to have burned themselves into his retina.

    He knew this was going to happen sooner or later. He knew the other’s would see his scars and he’d have to deal with their shocked and pitying faces. He just wished it hadn’t happened like this. Well, there was nothing he could do about it now. Jack let out another sigh, pulling his hands away from his eyes to stare at the ceiling once more. True, he couldn’t change what had happened, but he could avoid the others and their pressing questions and concerns for the time being. 

    Jack began to let his mind wander, his hand eventually drifting down to his stomach to trace the scars that stood out the most there. They were long and thick, their initial wounds having cut deep. There were seven of them, seven perfectly straight white lines that stood out, raised on his skin. Those were the results of a kitchen knife, a large one with a wide blade and a heavy handle. He would do this every once in a while, when he couldn’t sleep, or he found himself suspended in relentless boredom. He’d trace those seven white lines over and over while lying in his bed, his mind drifting off to the night when he’d first been marked with them. The night he’d died.

    Seven ridges, right there on his abdomen. Seven. Count them, like the pills.

    One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

    Seven scars. Seven thrusts of a blade. Seven emotions. Seven memories.

    Jack was pulled out of his daydreaming by a knock on his door. So they’d finally decided to follow him after all. He turned over in his bed an wrapped his pillow around his ears, trying his best to block out the noise. The pounding continued, accompanied by shouts and calls of his own name. He tried to block them out, tried to ignore the banging and think about something else. He couldn’t deal with them right now, they’d just have to wait. Jack let his mind wander once more, hoping it would help block out he incessant banging that was now resounding in his own skull.

    He thought about the plan, they were supposed to hit this big museum in Britain in three weeks. Everything was already mostly set up—Jack heard Rapunzel gasp as his shirt hung in tatters— _Stop it_. The museum didn’t even have that much security, from what Jack had gathered, just a couple of guards— Merida let out an awed “Jings Crivvens” as Jack felt his face heat up, the embarrassment of the whole situation— _Shut up_. A couple of guards and a few security cameras. Made sense, really, that the building would have such little security, they were only going after— Hiccup just stared, wide-eyed and disbelieving— _Damn it, Jack._ He couldn’t help it, his mind was starting to get away from him, yet again. Jack had managed to effectively drown out the pounding on his door, but at the expense of loosing control of his own thoughts. 

    All the white-haired criminal could see were those astonished faces, just staring at him, like he was some animal in a zoo. Those faces—his friends—just staring and pitying and judging his scars, his embarrassing scars that labeled him for what he was, what he had been. 

    Seven ridges, right there on his abdomen. Seven. Count them, like the pills.

    One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

    Seven scars. Seven thrusts of a blade. Seven emotions. Seven memories.

    Those faces just wouldn’t stop staring. Now it wasn’t just the other three, it was everyone. Everyone that had ever seen the scars, resurfacing in his mind’s eye, one after the other. Face after face, staring, and pitying, and just knowing.

    Seven ridges, right there on his abdomen. Seven. Count them, like the pills.

    One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

    Seven scars. Seven thrusts of a blade. Seven emotions. Seven memories.

    He couldn’t control it, the faces, the scars, flashing through his mind again and again. Soon the memories started. The one’s he’d locked away, but always seemed to have the key. It felt like they were escaping more frequently, no matter how many chains he put on the door, they’d always come back. Again and again, just as vibrant and real as the days they’d happened, as if Rapunzel had painted them on his brain, a mural of his own suffering and forgotten past, always coming back to haunt him.

    He was in chains again, walking down an endlessly dim hallway, no clue as to where he was being taken. _Clink, clink._ The chains rattled every time he took a step. 

    Pain. He remembered pain, coming from everywhere, but nowhere at once. It was like his body was on fire, and he begged and pleaded, desperate for it to stop. There was blood—his blood he thought—everywhere, painting his body in crimson. He just wanted the pain to stop

    Dogs. Barking, growling, panting. They were everywhere and there were so many and they were so big. Giant teeth, strung with drool, bitting, tearing. One was let loose on him and he’d screamed into the night. The dogs had had chains around their necks.

     _Clink, clink._ The chains hurt, they chaffed and chaffed until he bled. Step after step. The hallway just kept going on and on. He wondered if it would ever end.

    There were sheets. Black ones, made of silk, but felt like sandpaper against his skin.

     _No! Anything but that. Think of anything, but not that._

    A boy, standing in front of him. He was pleading. He looked so scared.

     _No..._

    The black sheets ran over Jack’s naked body, the rustling sounding like thunder in his ears. 

     _Stop, please._

    The boy was crying. He was sobbing and screaming, pleading over and over.

   _Please... not this_.

    Jack was still in the chains. _Clink, clink._ He thought they looked strange against such soft fabric.

    The boy was on his knees, crying and pleading. A gun was held to his head.

     _Not again._

    Hands that felt cold, even for Jack, against his bare skin as he was surrounded in those black sheets. _Clink, clink_ , the chains went.

    The boy. The gun. Jack was crying. No, the boy was crying. They were both crying. The boy was screaming. There was a gun. There was a trigger.

    Black sheets. Hands. Cold. Chains. _Clink, clink._

    The boy. The trigger. Wait, who was holding the gun again? He couldn’t remember. 

     _Clink, clink._

    The boy was alone and crying. There was a gun. Was Jack holding the gun? Yes. No. He couldn’t remember.    

     _Clink, clink._

    Why couldn’t he remember?

   _Clink, clink._

    Crying. Sobbing. The boy. The gun. The bang. The blood. He couldn’t remember.

     _Clink, clink._

    The memories weren’t going to stop. They were relentless. They were overwhelming. Jack reached out, blinded by his own memories flashing across his eyes. After some fumbling, he found it, the small, plastic bottle on his night stand. He tried to shake out the pills, but couldn’t. His hands were trembling too violently. The pills went everywhere. They scattered across the floor and his bed. A few landed in his hand. Three, to be exact. Three pills. Count them. One. Two. Three. He stared at them. He’d only taken two before now. 

     _Clink, clink._

    Jack screwed his eyes shut. Please, just make it stop. He swallowed all three, not even thinking, just begging for his torment to end. From then on, he took three pills, every time. Two was simply not enough to stop the memories.

    Jack opened his eyes. The blurriness of sleep clogged his mind, making his thoughts fuzzy. He sat up and looked around. He was back in the present, in the warehouse in Chicago. Toothless was still where he’d fallen asleep hours ago and Hiccup lay beside him on the mattress that stood in as a couch in the middle of the floor. Jack staggered to his feet and glanced at the time on the still projected holographic screen that he and Hiccup had left on. Jack’s tired mind couldn’t help but think that if it was a newer model, it would’ve turned itself off by now. It was roughly five in the afternoon. The hottest hour of the day had come and gone, though the heat it left in its wake was still overwhelming. With a sleepy sigh, Jack left the screen on and made his way through the warehouse and to the stairs. 

    Shaking off the rest of sleep, Jack made the climb to the rooftop of the warehouse. Once he was there, he walked to the other end of the roof and just stood there, the light breeze raking through his hair and cooling his body. He lingered for a moment, enjoying the release from the heat that had built up inside the warehouse. Suddenly, he took a step forward and just laid down, right then and there, on the edge of the rooftop. He laid, face-down, his stomach pressing into the grit and concrete as his chin rested on arms crossed in front of him. His face was barely half a foot from the edge of the roof. For a while, he just looked out over that edge of the roof. He couldn’t see far, other buildings and rooftops got in the way. There wasn’t even much to see, everything was abandoned, left to rot and decay by its own creators. 

    Jack continued to gaze out at the memory of a city, abandoned in the wake of the newest inventions and buildings. It wasn’t long before he began to see a ghost city, the images of people and businesses spread overtop the skeletons of the abandoned infrastructures. There were cafés and shops and people going every which way, like ants in their network of tunnels and hills. Jack could see them. He could see all of them as he stared out at this forgotten city. There goes the baker with his bread, like always. There’s a single mother, pulling her child along by the hand, refusing to stop at the tiny human’s protests. There goes a couple, cute and adorable, hanging on to each other as if they’d be lost forever if they let go. Businessmen, bankers, teenagers, lovers, friends, workers, lawyers, construction workers. All of them, everyone, was down there, going everywhere and nowhere, just spinning forever aimlessly in this empty city. They were ghost people, going into ghost shops, in a ghost city. They were an imitation of life. They weren’t real. The city was dead.

    Jack heard the rusty creak of the rooftop door as he gazed out at his private ghost town. He didn’t turn around or ask who was there, but simply waited as he listened to the crunch of the gravel and grit as they walked across the concrete roof. The footsteps stopped to his left.

    “Feeling lonely, yet?”

    Jack smirked at the question. 

    “No, not really,” he replied as a body came down to lay beside him. Now two stomachs rested on the concrete and grit, overlooking a city long since gone. 

    “Hope you don’t mind some company, then.”

    “Not at all.”

    Jack turned he head to rest the side of his face on his arms then. He found a curtain of blonde hair, a nose sprinkled with freckles, and bright green eyes, shining with hope, staring back at him. 

    Rapunzel giggled, scrunching up her face in a smile meant only for him.

    “I thought you were sleeping with everyone else,” Jack noted.

    “I was,” she replied. “But then I woke up and saw you were missing. I thought this was where you’d be.”

    Jack gave a small laugh as he turned to look out over the skeleton of a city once more, “Figures you’d know where I’d be.”

    Rapunzel laughed again, “Even if I didn’t, I’d find a way to find you.”

    She turned to gaze out at the city with Jack. She didn’t see, didn’t notice, didn’t comprehend the look on Jack’s face at the comment she’d made. She didn’t need to. She knew it was there, all the same.

    “Jack, what do you see?”

    “Huh?”

    “Right now, from this rooftop, what do you see?”

    Jack took a moment to answer. Should he tell her the truth?  Or just come up with something that sounded a bit more sane than a ghost city? Knowing Rapunzel, she’d be able to tell if he was lying, so he decided to go with the truth. 

    “I see a dead city. I see its ghost, forgotten and ignored. I see the people that abandoned it, their images still wondering in the streets, invisible and waiting to be seen.”

    He let out a sigh at his own words. “Sounds like nonsense, huh?”

    He turned his head as he heard another giggle. 

    “I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living,” Rapunzel explained as she flipped onto her back and continued to look out over the city upside-down.

    “Oh?” Jack asked, curious. “And who said that?”

    She turned to look at him again, a playful smile on her lips. “Dr. Seuss. And I agree with him one hundred percent.”

    Jack laughed as the both of them turned to look out over the empty rooftops once more. There was a moment of contemplation before Jack asked, “Rapunzel?”

    “Hmmm?”

    “Why do you read?”

    It was a question Jack had always wanted to ask. Among the many hobbies the blonde seemed to have, Jack always thought that reading was the one she immersed herself most heavily in. She even had her own collection of paper books that went with her whenever they changed home base. At least once a day, the blonde would have her nose in a book, paper or electronic, and it had always sparked Jack’s curiosity. He read, on occasion, but never found it quite as enthralling as Rapunzel seemed to. He’d rather be outside, playing a prank, or working through the details of their next hit. He was more physical that way.

    Rapunzel took a moment before answering. 

    “I’m not really sure. I guess it’s kind of like to me what you’re pills are to you. I love stories and books help me forget. They help me get through the day.”

    Jack accepted the answer in silence, understanding her reasoning. _Of course,_ he thought. _With everything she’s been through, of course she’d need a way to deal with it, just like I do._

    Rapunzel broke his thoughts with a comment, “Eugene was the one that taught me to read.” She said it more as a thought than a comment, the realization having come to her with the bringing up of the subject of books. 

    “You didn’t know how to read when we found you?” Jack asked, incredulous at this new information.

    “Well I did, a little bit. Gothel taught me some, but it was just basic stuff. After you guys rescued me, you left for a while and Eugene was the one left to show me what the city was like. He took me into a library one day, and just taught me to read. Read well, I mean. Took me from a third grade reading level to a twelfth.” While she talked Rapunzel gazed out over the dead city. Jack very rarely heard the blonde talk about Eugene. Eugene was a friend that had actually been a part of their group before the media shit storm hit. The guy had really only been close with Rapunzel. He hadn’t even hang around them that much, he’d come and go as he pleased, never really completely part of the family. Then, one day, about half a year ago, he simply never came back. He’d vanished and none of them knew where he was or what had happened to him. They were all worried about what had happened to Eugene, of course, but Rapunzel seemed to have taken it the worst. She barely mentioned him, and whenever the subject was brought up, she’d become uncharacteristically quiet. He was, after all, her knight in shining armor, in a sense. He and Jack were the ones that had helped her escape from the hell that had been living with Gothel.

    “Do you miss him?” Jack asked, curious as to why Rapunzel had mentioned their missing friend in the first place.

    She took a moment to answer as she contemplated the empty streets and buildings below them.

    “Sometimes,” she finally admitted. “Most of the time I’m just mad at him, though. He could’ve at least told us were he was going.”

    “Yeah...” Jack responded, not quiet sure of what to say. The both of them soon lapsed into silence.

    The two stayed like that for what must’ve been the good part of half an hour, both simply content to experience the other’s silence. It was nice, not having to worry about anything or struggle with the plans and pressures of their next heist. Finally, after what seemed like eternity on that rooftop, Jack turned his head to ask Rapunzel if maybe they should go back inside and see if the others were awake. Instead, he found her already staring at him, her eyes distant as they roamed over his body. Jack suddenly became very aware and self conscious of the fact that he wasn’t wearing a shirt and all of his scars were completely exposed. Jack wasn’t used to this Rapunzel. She looked...different. Her face was much too serious, filled with a sort of sadness Jack had very rarely ever seen on her. She seemed contemplative and distant, which was saying something. Rapunzel was never distant, she was always in the moment, always experiencing life. Jack wondered if that was why he felt connected to her so strongly. She was always the link that kept him tied to the ground, the connection preventing him from drifting into the abyss of his own subconscious. She made him feel real, like he wasn’t one of the ghosts wandering through the dead city below them, invisible, intangible, just waiting to be seen.

    “Are all your scars from Pitch?”

    Jack tensed at the unexpected question. It was so random, so unprovoked, it took him by surprise. 

    He had to swallow, his throat suddenly dry, before he answered, “Most of them, yeah.”

    He didn’t like talking about the subject of Pitch and the history Jack had had with him. Every time he’d tried to, another attack would come on of merciless memories and flashbacks and he’d have to take his pills again. And that, he tried to avoid as often as possible.

    So before Rapunzel could asked another question, Jack suddenly stood up.

    “Come on, we should probably be getting back inside,” he said holding a hand out to Rapunzel.

    The blonde took a moment’s hesitation before taking the proffered help and being hauled to her feet. Rapunzel worried about Jack. Sure, he was their leader and sure he acted like nothing got to him, but she knew better. She’d noticed how often he was taking his pills now, meaning his attacks were getting more frequent. That worried her, and the fact that he never talked about it or came to any of them about it, concerned her most of all. He was a loner, he’d rather handle things on his own than go to someone else. Rapunzel understood that. She was good at that, understanding what people needed. It was something Gothel had taught her. But she also knew that one person couldn’t carry everything on their own. Jack was the leader. He had to take care of the plans and the team and the heists and his own past. Rapunzel wished he’d only let her in, then maybe she could help ease the burden on his shoulders. But she knew she couldn’t force him to open up. It would be like cracking an egg open before its time and killing the hatchling inside. So she simply waited. She’d wait on stand-by for as long as she needed to. She’d wait until he realized that it was too much for him to handle alone. And then she’d be there to catch him when he fell. She knew she’d always be there for him.  
  
  


* * *

  
    “Ah, but come on, Tooth! I wanna be there when they do it!”

    “Bunny, you know you can’t,” Tooth replied calmly, doing her best to quel her partner’s temper. “This isn’t even our case anymore. Ralph and Vanallope are going to make the arrest, that’s all there is to it. Now, you could keep complaining, or you could help me research so we can make our own arrests,” the female agent finished, matter-of-factly, before shoving a stack of files across the table towards her partner. 

    The other two agents were actually out in the field right now, arresting the perpetrator all four of them had helped to identify. Bunny had been itching to get out, to be in the field with some action, rather than cooped up at headquarters, but Tooth was right. This wasn’t their case anymore, Ralph and Schweetz were to make the arrest and gain the credit since it was their responsibility.

    Agent Aster took up a file, defeated as his face fell and began to read the report, muttering a string of curses under his breath as he did so.

    “It’s upside down,” his partner commented cooly, never looking up from her own files. 

    “Aghh!” Aster yelled, slamming the file back on the stack it’d come from. “What’s the point of this anyways?” he continued, his frustration so thick, it was practically leaking from his ears. “The damn buggers could be anywhere by know. They’re invisible, and we haven’t a damned thing to go on. We’ve got no fair go at finding any good oil on these mongrels any time soon, so why bother?”

    Tooth let out a sigh and slowly set down her documents. She knew it was getting bad for Bunny when he started throwing out his Australian euphemisms as often as pronouns. 

    “Bunny, the director’s already said, we’re doing as much as we can by researching. If we find out how this group operates, we find out how to bring them down.”

    “Yeah,” Bunny conceded with a frustrated groan while running his fingers through his hair. “Just wish it didn’t make me want to blow my bloody brains out.”

    Aster leaned forward then, pushing the stack of documents out of the way to give him enough room to rest his chin on the desk. Tooth cast a glance at the pouting agent’s face and couldn’t help but empathize. She could understand her partner’s frustration, she really could. Being on a case for the better side of a month with absolutely no progression and nothing to show for it would get on anyone’s nerves. She was grateful for the reprieve from endless research the both of them received when helping with Ralph and Vanallope on the Baskerville case. But since that had already been wrapped up nicely, the two agents were back to their original case, which at the moment was still pretty stagnant. Even Tooth had to admit, she was growing bored and a tad bit restless with the incessant reading and research.

    “Hmm,” she said, still contemplating her partner. “Well, maybe not.”

    “Come again, sheila?” Bunny asked, eyebrow raised with chin still firmly on the desk. 

    “Come on,” Tooth said, snatching up her purse and shoving her paperwork into a desk drawer as she rose to her feet, a certain gleam in her eye. 

    “‘Come on’ what?” Bunny asked, now upright and rightly confused. 

    “Up up, you Dingo,” the female agent instructed, pulling at Bunny’s arm. “You and I,” she explained, a smile on her lips. “We’re having a night out, come on.”

    “Wait, what?” Aster couldn’t help but feel completely confounded by the situation.

    “You heard me,” came the response as Tooth succeeded in hauling Bunny out of his chair and started towards the door. We need to get our minds off the case so we can have a fresh start. Maybe get a new angle. Who knows?”

    “W-Wait,” Bunny called as he fumbled for his jacket, still completely lost, before following his partner to the door. “So we’re just leaving?”

    “It’s closing time, Bunny,” Tooth explained as she continued towards the door. “Let’s call up Nod and M.K. See if they’ll meet us at a bar. Hell, ask Mandy if she wants to come.”

    She suddenly stopped then, spinning around in the doorway and blocking her partner. “We’ve been working too hard,” she said finally, “It’s time to have some fun.”

    A smile spread slowly across Aster’s face a the realization finally began to sank in, “Oh, sheila, now you’re speakin’ my language.” Agent Ana Faeley matched the smile with her own before leading her partner out the door and onto the street for a well deserved night of excitement.  
  



End file.
